


the bite of love and death

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awesome Peter, BAMF Stiles, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling in love at the end of the world, Feral Derek, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Mild Gore, POV Multiple, Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Slow Build, Wolf Derek, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 23:32:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 39,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12568668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: The zombie apocalypse didn't bother Derek. His world ended years ago, when his home burned around him, and every day since was just a slow march to the end of the world.Until Peter finds a human boy in a slaughtered camp and Derek can't make himself let go.Stiles lost his family, his friends, everything he's always known--he's completely alone. But Derek and Peter offer him safety,pack. And at the end of the world, no one survives alone.And then they hear whispers, of a pack and a very special girl.





	1. The Day the World Died

**Author's Note:**

> HI! ok, this is a first with the whole posting on a schedule thing, but. The story is completely written!!! And updates will be Tuesdays and Fridays until I finish posting. Also, huge thanks to la_rubinita for the fantastic beta.  
> This seems obvious because, zombies, but yeah there's graphic violence throughout.  
> Enjoy! <3

**Prologue.**

The world ended on a Tuesday morning.

He was in Beacon Hills Preserve when it happened, when the vial of XHTae29 was dropped, when contamination protocols broke down and it went airborne in the research facility in Berkeley.

Three hours later, XHTae29 slammed into RBI3 and it was all over from there. The first victims were the scientists who started the whole damn thing, and it spread across the campus like wildfire.

The world ended on a Tuesday morning.

But no one knew about it. Not for hours, days. The world was over and it kept on spinning, like nothing had happened, a heart pumping after the head had been cut off.

Derek Hale didn't notice the world ending. His had ended two years previously, burned to the ground while his sister and uncle held him back, screaming his guilt and grief. For him, the zombie apocalypse wasn't the end.

It was just the next step in a march to a grave he'd already dug and lined with wolfsbane.

~.~

The infection spread through bites and bodily fluids. For a few days, the authorities tried to suppress it, keep the massive death tolls and violence at Berkley contained. It might have worked, if there wasn't social media. Even cutting the internet and putting up a cell signal blocker didn't do anything to suppress the story. It drew more attention, and when the infected broke through the quarantine, they fell on those reporters and gathered protesters like hungry wolves.

They tore through them, and what they didn't kill, they Turned.

~.~

Stiles Stilinski heard the news on Tuesday night.

He listened to it on the police scanner he stole from his father, listened to the increased panic from law enforcement officers in the southern reaches of the state, and huddled in his bed, wondering what the hell was happening.

It was the first time since his mother's death four years ago that he wanted to curl up in his father's lap and pretend that the world wasn't a bad place.

Stiles sat in his empty house, his father working through the night, and listened on the radio as the world fell to pieces.

~.~

It took two months for the infection to spread worldwide, and by six months, the emergency broadcasts coming from Washington had stopped.

Stiles sat across from his father, and read in his gaze everything he wasn't saying.

"We're going to survive this," he said, and John looked at him, a weary sort of resignation in his gaze.

"Yeah, kiddo. We are."

The fortifications of Beacon Hills began the next day.

~.~

The world ended on a Tuesday morning.

It was sunny and warm and no one knew it, not really.

Not then.


	2. the stink of death

The wolf sits in the snow and stares down into the valley. He can smell the distinct scent that clings to all human encampments and whines softly.

  
The scent of death and bitterness and hopelessness and smoke and fear hangs like a miasma over the valley and he nudges the grey wolf at his side, whining again.

They've seen human settlements before. They've watched them change, slipping from the fortified cities to walled neighborhoods, watched them collapse in on themselves as humanity withered under Erab. It has been almost six months since they stumbled on a human camp that didn't reek of the military or give loyalty to a pack.

The grey wolf is watching it with that familiar gleam in his eyes and the black wolf snarls softly. He doesn’t trust human camps. Not after all this time, not when they reek of desperation and death.

Peter chuffs and nips at his jaw before loping forward.

_News of the world wouldn’t be the worst thing, nephew._

The black wolf snarls, but it’s a weak protest, all growl and no bite. He doesn’t like when the other wolf talks like that, when he sounds more human than wolf. And Peter _knows_ it.

Derek is convinced it’s why the older wolf persists in it. Peter turns, gives the black wolf a wolfish grin.

_Bastard._

There is a part of him--the human part he's been trying to bury for the better part of five years--that knows going into the camp is smart. It doesn’t smell like the military that strong-armed human survivors into service in a war they'd already lost, and they don’t smell like a pack that would try its damndest to make the two wolves submit. The humans are unclaimed and the closest thing to safe anything in this world comes to.

And he wants to circle the valley.

Wants to stick to the high mountain trails that are still covered over with snow and run until his paws are sore and his head is clear and he can’t smell the sour _fear death _stench of humans.__

Derek learned early in life that humans weren't to be trusted. Even before Erab broke out in Berkeley and wiped out humanity, he'd known.

The world might call _them_ monsters and trust them only slightly more than they did the Dead, but werewolves weren't the ones who burned down his world. Neither were the Dead.

Peter likes to remind him that not all humans are the same. Laura had said the same thing, before--before.  
Sometimes he remembers that.

But it is easier like this. He doesn’t understand Peter's insistence that they shift, walk on two legs in _clothes_ , doesn’t understand the other wolf's need to _know_ things.

It is easy, being a wolf. He knows when he wants to sleep and when he is hungry. He knows when to run and when to stay still and silent.

He knows his pack and the moon in her bright beauty in the sky. It's all he needs to know.

~.~

There were some camps that they had stayed in where Derek had walked tall and hadn't been afraid.

There was one, a few months after they fled Beacon Hills. Parrish and a few of his friends from the Army, a ragtag group of humans with more sense than guns and more civilians than food, built it a safe distance from Beacon Hills and the threats there. Derek and Peter had stayed with them for six months, doing their best to feed the hungry survivors.

They fled when a horde fell on the town, and Derek tried to listen to the pounding of their paws in the woods and not the screams of their friends dying.

After that, he stayed in his wolf form, even when Peter dragged them into human camps for supplies and word of the plague.

It was easier. Humans died. They died easy and bloody and if they were very lucky, they stayed dead. But werewolves--Derek--were much harder to kill, and immune to Erab. It was easier to survive the endless parade of death when he didn't care about them, when he didn't know their names and stand guard with them.

When they were not some pseudo pack that could never replace his family, but sometimes, sometimes it felt like maybe.  
Like almost.

Peter watched him, sometimes, when they were with humans and he slunk along at his uncle's heels, too big, too wild, to be anything but a wolf. But he stopped arguing with Derek about the shift years ago.

_We don't need to go down there_ , Derek protests, and Peter ignores him, trotting on determinedly.

The black wolf catches his uncle near their den, and he whines as the other wolf shakes himself out. There's a familiar scent of agony and blood, and the wolf whines in sympathy, before Peter stands before him, naked and shivering.

"You'll stay here, I assume?" Peter asks, more statement than question and the big black wolf circles three times before lying down, tucking his nose under his tail.

"Acting like a puppy won't help, Derek," Peter says, words sharper than his tone.

Derek's ears twitch and he closes his eyes, content to ignore the man. He has no use for humans. Not even Peter, when he sheds his wolfskin and walks as one of them.

_You are one of them_ , a voice whispers, one that sounds achingly like his sister.

He burrows deeper into himself, and Peter sighs above him.

"Be safe, nephew. I'll be back by sunrise."

Derek huffs, a quiet acknowledgement, and then Peter is gone, moving on silent feet toward the valley floor and the humans who are nesting there.

For a few moments, when the sound of Peter has vanished, the wolf feels a burning urge to bolt after him.

To stay near his _pack._

But the silence settles, and the scent of their den eases over him, and he closes his eyes on the sense of loneliness.

He _should_ be alone. He knows that.

Knowing has never made it any easier to accept.

It's why he stayed, after the fire, when he knew he should leave. Peter and Laura would be better without him, and after everything he had done--leading the Argent bitch straight to his family--he deserved to be alone.

He hadn't left them, though. Laura refused to let him become an omega, refused to lose him like she'd lost so much else, and her determination drowned out his guilt. He thinks sometimes he let it drown out his guilt.

He wanted an excuse to stay, and Laura gave it to him.

Then the world ended, and guilt didn't matter anymore. Surviving mattered. Erab, the slang name given to XHTae29-RBI3, didn't infect werewolves. Laura thought their body burned it out faster than it could infect. Derek didn't really care why they didn't turn.

He just was grateful they didn't. Those first few months, while the first wave of infection raged rampant through America and farther, he'd been bitten six times in the defense of Beacon Hills.

But being immune didn't mean anything when a horde tore Laura apart. Some things even werewolves couldn't heal from and that was one of them.

It was Derek who found her, the top half of her body bloody and savaged but still recognizable under the blood. He felt her death long before he found her, felt the pack bond snapping and the alpha spark burning through him, a gift he never wanted and didn't know what to do with.

He wanted his sister, his alpha, the only thing keeping him sane after the murder of his family.

And if it weren't for Peter, he would have stopped. Stopped fighting, stopped hunting, stopped breathing, just lain down next to her dead body until he could join her.

He wanted to. With a desperation he hadn't felt since the fire and puzzling through Kate's betrayal, he wanted to die and follow his sister.

Peter wouldn't let him.

Even now, five years after Laura's death, it is Peter who kept Derek moving, who went to the human villages and learns enough to keep them moving in a forward direction.

Peter keeps him alive when grief drags him down and he lost himself in his wolf, in the purity of it, in the longing howls at the moon that drew the Dead.

Peter keeps him alive and some days, he hates him for that.

Most days, missing Laura and his pack is a low thrumming ache in the back of his mind. It is easy to ignore when he and Peter are hunting, when they ran through their territory and play in the dark woods. When Peter wrestles him to the ground and bites at his soft belly in play.

It’s only in moments like this, when Peter leaves him alone and his thoughts turn inward that the loss, the aching empty place where Laura, where Mama, Father, _Pack_ should be.

He whines in his throat, and bites down on his tail, worrying it anxiously to keep his grief choked down, to keep from howling for Peter and his long dead sister.

The wind shifts through the trees, carrying the scents of a familiar dead world and he whines. Shifts back on his haunches to curl deeper in the den.

He waits there, ears pinned back, hiding from the world and everything in it, as the night passes in the forest.


	3. the human camp

 

 

The wolf wakes from a restless sleep to the smell of fire. Smoke is thick in his nose, a heavy taste on his tongue and he shakes his head, almost violently, to dislodge it.

For a few mindless moments, he is in his childhood home and the shrieks in the air are his family as they die, and the tightness against his chest is Laura’s arms.

A howl, high and demanding, cuts through the early morning. It jerks the wolf’s head up and his eyes gleam bright in the dark as he cocks his head.

Peter. He scrambles free of the den, and tilts his head, and--

_There_ . The howl comes again and he's running, even before it dies. Peter is shifted, enough that he can howl, and Derek knows his uncle, knows he wouldn't do that unless there was something very _wrong_.

He skids over some rocks and hears a rabbit bolting away from him to his left, but it's tuned out as he scents the air and runs.

Human camps smell like death and smoke and bitterness. They’ve seen enough over the past five years to know what they should smell like and this isn’t it.

Something changed while he slept hidden in their den, and he snarls as he runs, snarls because he can taste death and rot on the air, can taste blood and Peter is down there.

He is close enough now that he can hear the fighting, and he slows as he takes it in.

"Don't burn the tents. Not til you've checked them!" a sharp voice, female and commanding. Something about it makes a growl rumble in his throat.

"Ma'am," a voice begins and then—

"Did you kill it?"

"No, ma'am."

Derek shifts forward, crawling on his belly to the edge of the forest to peer at the bloody clearing.

It is crawling with humans. They are military, a neatly ordered, well supplied branch led by a woman with dark hair and a harsh mouth, glaring into the trees like they'd personally offended her.

Derek growls at the sight of her.

"What fucking good is it to take a camp with no survivors if you leave a goddamn survivor," she demands, icily.

"There weren't any 'wolves in camp," the soldier says, stiffly.

Derek dismisses them. The wolf wasn't killed. Peter is alive, and he's waiting somewhere in this for Derek.

The wolf eyes the camp critically.

The tents are being tossed, the soldiers methodical in their search for any and everything useful.

They were methodical in their killing too, a neat line of dead bodies, each with a bullet hole to the back of the head.

The wolf doesn't look at the line of dead bodies. He doesn't look at the small crumpled body of a child there, or the hand of the woman near the child, out thrown, like she was reaching for the dead child when she was shot down.

He doesn't look.

The wolf watches the camp as a whole, ears flicking as he tracks the humans and the female who leads them.

It’s a small camp--ten tents in all. They’re ragged and patched things, and the wolf wonders how the humans could survive in that, how they could last the winter and the Dead when their dens were so flimsy and cold. He hunkers there, waiting and watching them, and there is a part of his wolf mind that is impassive and dismissive--the weak die.

It’s what they do. There is nothing to stop it, and with them dead, there is more to hunt for the predators.

There is another part of him--a whisper in Laura’s voice, that murmurs, _they were human. They deserved better than this_.

The whole world deserves better. Doesn’t mean any of them will get it.

He stays there until the sun is warm against his fur and his belly is cold and wet from melted snow and the woman and her uniformed killers pack up their little trucks and trundle away from the dead. Until he can’t hear their trucks anymore, and then he stands and shakes himself, snapping at a fly that has been buzzing around his nose. It squirms on his tongue before he spits it out and trots out of the trees.

_Hurry_.

He can feel Peter more than he can actually see or hear him, the last pack bond vibrating with worry and pain, and it pushes Derek into a loping run until--

He skids to a stop, his head tilted. Peter snarls again, a demand that feels far away as he focuses.

There.

He turns, nosing at the ground until he stumbles. There’s a small dip, a barely dug hole, and he almost falls into it.

The leaves are dirty, wet with mud and snow and rusty blood and he whines as he paws them aside.

And there it is, the source of the heartbeat he's been listening to for hours. It's slow, almost languorous, and Derek yips, softly, nudging the boy.

He thinks that the heartbeat is too slow.

_Derek_ , Peter snarls.

_I found someone_ _,_ Derek answers, staring at him.

The boy is pale and fragile looking, all white skin stretched over lean bones, bruises and blood and red red lips and dirty hair.

He smells like dying and blood and Derek noses at him, whimpering in his throat as he licks at the bloody hole in his gut.

It is worrisome that his actions don't cause the boy to stir, don't cause any response at all.

He snarls when a twig snaps, belatedly realizing that the intruder is his uncle, and Peter pauses a step back, warily. He's shifted, and Derek huffs, licks at his jaw as the gray wolf sniffs at the boy.

He's shivering and his blood tastes bright and coppery and alive on Derek's tongue and he wants to keep him.

_He will die_ _,_ Peter says, simply.

_I won't let him_ _,_ Derek answers, lying close to the boy, until he can feel the chill of him against his fur, seeping into his skin.

He ignores Peter's hard stare, and the dead bodies a hundred feet away. The boy's heart slows more and he licks at the wound while his uncle shifts to his human form and sighs.

"You'll regret this, when he dies."

Derek growls, a low, subvocal thing, his eyes glowing red and Peter turns with a huff, retreating the way he came.

The truth is, he knows this a bad idea. They don't adopt strays. After Parrish and his band of humans fell, they promised each other they wouldn't get drawn into another group of humans.

They're fragile. They die, so easy and so bloody. And they've lost so much, already.

It's been six years since Erab broke out and over four since the massacre of Parrish and his civilians.

And for just over four years, they'd been together and alone, even when Peter dragged them from the woods and into human camps for news and supplies. The world ended, and his pack died, but Derek is surviving and doing just fine at it, alone.

He is breaking their rule.

Logically, he knows he is. And if he were human and thinking only with his human mind and baggage, maybe he would have walked away. Maybe he would have left the boy in the ditch, covered in leaves and bleeding out slowly.

One more dead body that would rise and join the ranks of the Dead.

But he isn’t human, and every time he even considers leaving, even shifts away from the boy for a heartbeat, something primal and wild in him, in his _wolf_ , snarls and curls closer.

Presses his nose into the warm wet hole in his side, licking away the blood until the bleeding slowed. Listening to the slow but steady beat of his heart.

He feels the tiny shivers that goes through him and he whines in his throat, wishing that wherever Peter had gone, he would hurry to return.

"I wish you'd tell me what the hell you're thinking," Peter says, summoned by his wishes and brushing Derek aside as he strips the boy out of his shirts. Derek peers over his shoulder as he works, a low, constant noise of distress in the back of his throat.He is brushed aside when he gets in the way, but it’s perfunctory, the kind of dismissal that has no heat or bite to it.

Peter is grumpy with him, and there will be an explanation demanded, soon. But he isn’t truly _angry_.

Derek licks his uncle's hand and the older man swats him absent mindedly as he finishes bandaging the hole in the boy's side.

He bundles him in three button down shirts and a heavy coat that Derek isn't sure where he found, and then sits back on his heels. Derek whines and squirms forward on his belly, pressing himself against the boy whose heartbeat sings a familiar rhythm, whose scent teases at the threads of his memory.

Peter straightens above him, and he hears, quietly, "Mischief, what have you done to yourself?"

 


	4. the favorite

 

 

 

Derek was always his favorite.

He was quiet and moldable, with a shy smile and bright eyes. And then, after the fire, he was all that delicious rage that sparked off Peter's, burning hot and furious and destructive.

He was still a good boy with a shy smile--he just never used it anymore. And he was different after the fire. Dangerous.

Then Erab broke out and Laura died and the furious man he had grown into vanished under the skin of a wolf, under the gleam of Alpha red.

He would never admit it, even if there was someone to admit it to, but he had missed his nephew.

Watching Derek snuffling at the boy, he sees something that reminds him of the quiet, shyly smiling boy he'd always loved more than all the rest.

It's that more than anything else that makes him patch the dirty child--he's scarcely more than that, and he'll die easy, Peter thinks--and lift him him from the dirt. There's a muffled groan of pain and Derek whines, dancing in agitation, eyes gleaming red.

"I'm being careful," Peter says mildly. "Now, make yourself useful and scavenge while I take him to the den. I'll be back soon."

Derek doesn't like it. From the way his eyes narrow and ears pin back, he very much dislikes it. But he obeys when Peter turns away, because new pet or not, they need to survive.

Derek was always his favorite.

He was quiet and shy and furious.

And he is, first and forever, a survivor.

~*~

It's later, after he and Derek have dragged the boy to the den, after they cleared the camp of everything they could use, and Peter put together a pack of things that smell like the boy--he'll want that, if he doesn't die, and if he does, they'll use the clothes and tidbits--that he gets a chance to really look over the boy.

He recognizes him, of course he does.

Stiles Stilinski was very hard to forget, even as young as he had been when Derek and Peter left Beacon Hills.

He melts a pot of snow and nudges Derek aside with his knee, ignoring his low grumble as he settles himself next to the sleeping boy.

Stiles doesn't stir as Peter strips him down to skin and gives him a sponge bath. Goose bumps prickle at his skin, but the stench of death and blood is overwhelming in the small den. Derek whines and presses against the boy on the far side.

He hasn't left Stiles’ side since they reached the den, not even when Peter rummaged through the scavenged remains of the human camp, and he barely blinks as he stares at the boy. Peter wonders what he remembers about him. If he knows the scent and recognizes him.

He wonders if Derek remembers Claudia.

"He's healthy," Peter murmurs and his nephew flicks an ear at him. "Look. You can see his ribs, but he isn't starving. He isn't bruised--the bullet is his only wound."

Derek snarls softly and Peter hums in his throat. "Yes, nephew, I'm not pleased about it either, but there is something to be said for his health. If all he has to heal from is the bullet, he might survive."

He will, Derek sends, a feeling more than words and Peter stares at him, at the way he won't look anywhere but Stiles' face, the features pinched even in sleep, sharp and arresting.

Interesting, Peter thinks. He brushes his fingers over Stiles bare throat and Derek snarls, sharp and furious, rising to his feet and pining Peter with a gleaming red glare.

"Easy, Alpha," Peter says, softly and non-threatening. "He is pack. That is my only claim to him."

It settles him and Derek huffs a little, the snarl cut off abruptly. He settles back next to the boy and sighs, his big head on the boy's shoulder.

Peter wonders if this fragile boy who could die so very easily, could be the one to bring Derek back to him.

He pets a hand through his hair and then moves away, shifting silently and pressing against his alpha, resting his nose on Derek’s haunches and staring at the snow falling beyond their den.

And he allows himself to hope.

**Derek was always, always his favorite.** **** ~~~~


	5. the boy

The boy does not die. Peter seems to relax after the first few days, and as he does, Derek allows himself to. He doesn’t die, and although the hole in his belly still feels warm when Derek noses at it--Peter snaps at him when Derek licks at the cloth bandage--but the boy stirs a little more every day.

It’s two days after they found him and the dead village that he blinks. Derek barks sharply, calling Peter and dazed eyes narrow as they focus on him.

Honey bright,  beta bright, golden framed with soot and so clever the wolf feels  seen and  known and he whines in his throat, licking at the boy’s chin.

“Holy shit,” he rasps.

Derek barks again and the boy blinks. He smells--startled, but not afraid and that makes the wolf inordinately pleased--his boy should never be afraid when he’s with Derek.

Peter skids into the den, his eyes glowing blue and the boy yelps, jerking back and Derek huffs as he lays across him, pinning the boy in place.

“Oh my god, you are gonna kill me,” the boy wheezes.

He isn’t wrong, Peter says.  Move, nephew.

Derek grumbles a low growl in his throat and the boy’s hand comes up, scratching through his fur. “Don’t growl like that if you’re using me as a pillow,” he scolds, sleepily, “It makes me worry about my lifespan.”

Derek snorts against his arm and there’s this noise, light and pleased before his heartbeat settles back into a familiar comforting rhythm.

For the first time since they found him, the boy sleeps and Derek feels like he can breath.

~*~

Derek runs through the woods, long legs stretching as he races the rabbit. It's the first time in days that he's run like this, the first time he could be forced away from the boy's side for more than a moment, and only because he'd listened to the boy's stomach grumble alarmingly. He'd whined and ignored it, for a time, but eventually slunk out of the den while Peter watched and darted into the woods.

His boy was hungry.

He would bring food.

It made a simple, pleasing sort of sense to him. He'd thought about bringing down a deer for the boy, but it seemed like too much, and didn't like to waste. Life in this world was precious, a sentiment that didn't make sense to his wolf, but he contented himself to running rabbits into the ground, shaking them until their necks snapped and they hung limp and fat for his boy's belly. He snuffles the four dead rabbits, pleased, before he picks them up and trots back toward the den.

He's far enough that when he hears the Dead, he bypasses them with a sub vocal growl, adding a mile to his long trek, but unwilling to risk four of them without Peter's help.

He listens as he trots through the woods, until the sounds of the Dead fade and he begins to hear the faint familiar beat of his boy's heartbeat.

For the first time in hours, he feels a stir of panic, and he stretches out, into the ground eating run that he can keep up for hours, for days, the ones that whittle away miles. He hears Peter yipping as he approaches and his ears prick as he slows to a walk, creeping up to the den.

The boy has emerged, and he's leaning against a nearby tree, in rough pants and a shirt that keeps falling off his shoulder, grinning at the gray wolf as it darts around him.

Your Mischief is a menace , Peter snaps, grumpy and Derek huffs a laugh as he bursts through the trees. The boy lets out a startled squawk as Derek rears up and plants his paws on the boy's thin--too thin--shoulders.

"Oh my god, you have dead bunnies. Why do you have dead  bunnies ?" Mischief almost wails and Derek drops them to lick at his neck, all pale and bare for him.

Derek doesn't like the clothes the boy has taken to wearing, but he doesn't mind this shirt so much.

"You have bunny breath," the boy informs him, and shoves gently at his paws.

For a second, Derek lays heavier on him, a reminder of his strength--he  can protect his boy--and then drops, dancing back a few steps as the boy prods the rabbits gingerly.

"They're very nice bunnies, Sweetwolf," he says, all approval and amusement and Derek preens, his eyes closing in pleasure as the boy scratches behind his ears.

"I suppose I don't need to cook one for you and Gray, hmm?"

Peter barks and Derek wants to snarl, wants to tell his uncle to find his own, but they are  pack . He stays quiet as Peter neatly catches the rabbit the boy throws to him, but pointedly  ignores the one left at his feet.

He watches with lazy interest as his boy skins the rabbit with a knife Peter keeps sharp in their den. He empties the intestines and Derek laps them up without hesitation. It takes nothing from his boy's belly to eat that. When they are spitted and roasting over a fire, even the third that he gave to Derek, the boy drops next to him on the ground.

He smells healthy, like sweat and life, with a touch of sadness that seems to cling to him, always.

"Thanks, sweetwolf," he murmurs and Derek gives a happy sigh as he settles his big head on the boy's lap and drifts to sleep, trusting Peter to protect them.

~*~

He wakes later that night to the sound of his uncle growling. For a moment, he doesn't understand it--they are wrapped up in each other, Mischief sleeping pressed against the dark wall of the den, the scent of smoky rabbit and content filling up the small space.

Peter growls again and Derek lifts his head.

He can smell it now.

Four. Earlier, I saw them. Hunting, Derek says and Peter shakes himself as he stands.

There's a curl of fear in his gut at leaving Mischief alone, sleeping, vulnerable but Peter chuffs impatiently.

Better we deal with it where he won't be in danger.

Derek licks at his forehead and his boy makes a face in his sleep, batting him away before Derek bounds out of the den.

They don't fight the dead often anymore. Erab broke out six years ago, and they've learned to live with it, to live with the zombies. Peter keeps boltholes for them, small cabins, carefully hidden dens, hidden apartments in a few cities that Derek hates, so when the Dead come too close, they run.

But Stiles is still too fragile to run.

There are four, and they move slow, shambling and clumsy. They've been Dead a long time. There is no finesse to a hunt like this, so when Peter snarls and the Dead turn toward them, Derek launches from the trees.

He lands on the nearest, a big Dead with sharp grabbing hands that rip at his fur even as he snaps down on the Dead's throat. There's a sick wet gurgle and it drops, lifeless. He spits out a mouthful of rotten meat and trachea and feels hands grabbing at him, digging into his haunches. Pain bites deep, fear snagging like a hot brand against his heart and he howls, twisting free to savage the Dead grasping at him. Peter is growling, low and wet, something thrashing in the underbrush, slowing before it stills and silence settles over them as Derek pants.

His mouth feels dirty, filled with black blood and rot, and he limps as he follows Peter back to their den, but he feels a bone deep satisfaction as he collapses next to Mischief, that he is safe.

That Derek made him safe.

 


	6. the simplicity of the wolf

The Simplicity of the Wolf

It’s simple, being a wolf. Time passes. The snow melts and the hole in his boy's gut heals, slowly enough that Derek worries it and Peter snarls at him. They fight, a real fight, fur and blood, claws and fangs, until Stiles screams at them and Peter is pinned, his throat in Derek's teeth, pulse pounding pounding _pounding_. Peter whines, but his gaze is furious when Derek relents and huffs, shaking the fight and the blood and curling protectively at the boy's side.

He ignores them both, curling into a furious ball of skin and blankets and Derek whines when he smelled like salt and hurt, but it took days, and both of wolves curling at his feet before Mischief would forgive them.

They didn't fight over him, after that. Peter stays in his wolf skin, and let the boy tends his own wound and gives them both a wide berth, until Derek grumbles and Mischief drags him by his scruff to curl in front of the boy as he slept.

Derek likes that his boy is fond of Peter. He didn't know exactly why, but it settles the wolf, makes something tight and worried in his chest relax, makes him almost purr in pleasure when he noses his way into the den and finds them sleeping curled together like puppies, the scent of them so twisted together he can’t separate them, their heartbeats beating the same too-fast rhythm.

He is pack , Peter says, simply, and Derek tries to ignore that.

They don't have a pack. He doesn't get to have one, not after everything he did to kill his family.

But.

They have Mischief.

Who lives up to his name, with a wicked smile and a high, yipping laugh, sly fox eyes that Derek can spend days staring into.

Mischief reminds him of family, and Peter, and every day that passes, he feels closer to the boy, like he is essential to Derek in ways that are terrifying.

It terrifies him because humans are fragile and die, and he doesn't know how to keep him safe, always

But every day, he is stronger, and the scent of pain fades until it almost gone, as around them the world turns green. He spends a full moon pressed to his boy’s side and the next, Mischief follows him out of the den and into the dark. The mountain air puffs in front of his lips in little white clouds that Derek wants to snap his teeth at and he shivers in the cold air, but grins as Derek and Peter romp through the trees, playfully fighting and chasing each other. Once, Derek hears a rabbit and almost chases it, but Mischief’s heartbeat bounds along in comforting familiar rhythm and he turns away, trotting back to his boy and flopping at his side with a pleased huff.

Mischief leans into him as the moon climbs in the sky and he feels that familiar tickle of  something .

It doesn’t happen often. Sometimes only when the boy is sleeping, his tension and worry bleeding away, leaving only the sweet content smell of boy and rest, and Derek thinks that it is familiar, like the faded echo of a memory.

He doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t even know if he wants to know what it means.

It’s easy being a wolf. Easy to bring his boy fat rabbits and curl next to him for warmth and lick away his tears.

He ignores Peter’s heavy stare and the familiar tug on his memories. A wolf has no need for either.

~*~

After the second full moon, watching Mischief trotting through the woods without grimace, Derek decides it's time to train his boy.

He is still weak, nephew.

Derek chews at Peter's ear and the gray wolf flicks it, annoyed.  He's human. He will always be weak. But he is pack and he'll survive longer if we teach him.

Peter is quiet for a moment, and then, wistfully,  It's been a long time since the pack was more than just us two.

Derek smells the sadness on his uncle and licks at his jaw, apologetic and whining.

It's how Derek finds himself and Peter nipping at Mischief's heels two days later, the boy grumbling but allowing them to herd him.

This would be easier if we were human, Peter says, dryly and Derek snarls.

"Keep your damn fur on," Mischief grumbles.

Eventually, he seems to realize that Derek wants him to run, and he mutters under his breath but jogs along behind Derek. It feels good,  right to run with Peter and Mischief, and he barks, excited, as they run through the trees. Peter yips and veers off, chasing a squirrel and Mischief laughs, a bright breathless sound.

~*~

They run every day, until Mischief can go for miles without being winded, until he moves through the forest with the same soundless grace of the wolves.

He follows the wolves when they hunt and one night, he hums softly and braids vines he'd gathered during the afternoon, until the den is bursting with the scent of green things. Derek watches, curiously as he makes traps.

The first time the trap caught something--a fat, greasy raccoon that made Derek's belly rumble just looking at it--he whoops with glee, grinning smug and proud. "You aren't the only ones who can take care of us," he almost crows.

The wolf is pleased his boy wants to provide for them, and eats the raccoon with a pleased gusto that he hadn’t since before Mischief joined them.

He’s stronger now.

Derek doesn’t know why he didn’t expect the what to change anything, but he didn’t. Maybe because the wolf was so happy, so  content with his pack, it never occurred to him that the human boy wouldn’t be.

~*~

The den is empty when he wakes, or emptier than he is used to--Peter is snoring quietly near him.

His boy is not there, and it makes something cold and frightened slide through his gut.

He crawls out of the den and sniffs at the air, trotting unerringly to where his boy is sitting.

He remembers sitting here, all those moons ago, staring into the snow covered valley, smelling the human camp and wanting to run.

“I’ve been thinking about them,” his boy admits, and his voice is serious in a way he never is.

The wolf tips his head, ears pricked at attention to towards the boy and he makes a vague sort of gesture. "I mean, I like it here. You and Grey are great. Not spectacular conversationalists, but you're good wolves and I'm alive, so that's always a plus, you know?"

Derek licks his hand, pleased by the praise and Mischief smirks at him, before his expression falls and he frowns at the valley.

"But I miss them, you know? I miss Liam and--god, I miss my dad," he breathes. For a moment, just a short moment, his boy smells so strongly of agony that he growls and starts to rise, confused about how he could be hurt when Derek was  there,  at his side to protect him.

"I just. I wish I had said goodbye. I wish I could say goodbye," he says, his voice choked. "I ran, because he told me to. And he died alone because I ran. Like a fucking  coward ."

Derek whines and squirms closer, putting his head in the boy's lap, licking at the tears on his chin. "I hate being here, being alive, when he's gone."

Derek sits silent next to him and wishes he didn't understand that feeling so well.

After that, his boy grows quiet, restless in his skin, even when he sits still and silent for hours next to Derek. It disturbs him. The boy was never silent. It is unnatural to see him so still.

It is a week later that he mentioned leaving, a quiet thing dropped into conversation as the wolves lounged in the den and Mischief repaired his traps.

It didn't really make sense, not for several minutes, until Mischief unfolds himself and slips out of the den and down to the river.

He wants to leave ," Derek says, numbly.

Peter watches their boy with steady eyes, not sparing a look for his nephew's turmoil and concern.

He can't stay here forever, he says, simply.  He is a boy, a brilliant one. He deserves more than we can give him. A house with a bed, a human who can speak to him and love him. We're only wolves, Derek. We can't be what a human like him needs.

Derek chews over that, and when Mischief returns, his cheeks pink and his skin clammy with sweat, he ignores the boy, curls into himself, brooding over what Peter had said, what Mischief wants.

It's been years since he shifted, but maybe his uncle is right. Maybe Mischief deserves more than this hole in the ground, even as warm as it is, as happy as he is.

Maybe Mischief isn't  happy, not really, not once he realized that he wasn't going to die.

That thought hurts more than Derek wants to admit and he shoves it aside, nibbles on the tip of his tail.

Maybe the boy doesn’t realize that he is pack.

Maybe he doesn’t  want to be pack.

Derek makes a low, pained whine at that and feels a hand settle in his fur, soothing over him. He doesn’t know how to give his boy everything he needs, and stay in this skin.

~*~

The day his boy goes back to the human camp, Derek doesn’t actually realize that’s where they are going. Not until they’re halfway down the mountain and he can smell the faintest trace of smoke on the air.

He whines and digs his heels in, and Mischief huffs a sigh. “You don’t have to go with me,” he says, glancing at the wolf sidelong. Peter sits nearby, expressionless, eyes sharp on them both. “But I need to go back. I need to see it, sweetwolf.”

Derek growls and the boy stares at him, patient, waiting, fearless.

You chose our packmate well, little nephew , Peter says, amused. Derek snaps at him, but he sighs and trots to the boy’s side, nudging him hard enough that Mischief stumbles a little.

Derek can smell his relief and presses harder into his legs as they continue their trek down the mountain.

The ground is still bare, in places. There’s ash where a fire pit was. But mostly, it looks untouched. The snow soaked up the blood and melted away, leaving no evidence of the people killed here, and Peter had buried everything they had left behind.

It’s anticlimactic, being here, and he can feel his boy’s disappointment as his shoulders droop and he whines.

“I don’t know what I expected,” he murmurs.

Derek doesn’t know either, but it was more than  this , he realizes. He trots away from him, to the little ditch where he had found Mischief, and sniffs at it, barking once before the boy follows him.

They wander for a while, as the sun shifts in the sky and Peter waits patiently for them to finish. At one point, Stiles digs at an old rotted tree, and Derek sniffs at it until he pulls out a ratty grey bag and a long bat. He grins at the wolf, wide and delighted. “They didn’t find it!”

Derek stares at the bat curiously but if his boy wants to carry the metal stick, he isn't’ going to argue.

When Mischief finds the plot of overturned ground and barely growing grass, he goes still, the kind of still that worries Derek, his eyes wide and heart jackrabbit fast.

For a moment, Derek is concerned, and noses at his elbow, with a low whine. He shakes himself and turns back to the forest. “C’mon, boys. Let’s go home.”

 


	7. the attack

the attack 

Mischief is  noisy.

He whistles when he’s braiding his vines, hums quietly when he sets his traps, whispers to Derek when they’re curled up in the den. Chatters like a squirrel when they’re running, even when his breath puffs from him in obvious distress. He even murmurs in his sleep, soft happy noises that make Derek’s tail thump in happiness and quiet, distressed whimpers that makes his belly churn in fear.

He is noisy.

But the first time he puts his hands to his lips, throws back his head, and  howls —Derek and Peter freeze. They’re on the far side of the river that cuts through the valley, chasing trout almost a hundred feet from the boy, and he  can’t smell anything that could hurt his boy, but Mischief is howling, and then—

He laughs, this shrill happy cackle that makes Derek’s mouth open in a wide wolfy grin.

“Oh my god, your  faces!”  he cackles, almost falling as he laughs and Peter lets out a mock growl, charging across the river and slamming into the boy. Mischief goes down with a startled yelp and a high giggle, rolling in the shallow water as Peter snaps at him.

It’s been a week since they went to the remains of the human village, and longer than that since Mischief talked about leaving, and he’s  howling at them, a call that is all family and familiar and  pack.  Derek’s chest aches with happiness and he throws his head back and howls, high and happy, pleased when Peter joins him.

The sound of the pack, Mischief’s eerie and sweet cry twisting with the wolves, echoes through the mountains, a song that feels like home.

He knows it’s dangerous, being this noisy, but Mischief is grinning and Peter’s not quietly mocking, and for the first time in he can’t remember how long, Derek is  happy.   Not just content with the hunt and the woods and their den.

He is  happy .

He howls again and let’s that warmth wash over him.

~*~

Mischief chatters as they walk back to the den, Peter snuffling at squirrels and mice in the underbrush. Five silvery fish hang from his boy’s hand, tied neatly, three cleaned for him, and he smells clean and content.

But something smells  wrong.

Derek sniffs the air again, and snarls, a moment before the woods explode around them in a flurry of limbs and rot. Mischief yelps and the Dead twist in his direction, drawn by his noise and clean uninfected scent, and Derek growls, slamming into the nearest one. He can hear Peter growling, hear the wet rip of rotted flesh and a whine as one of the infected catches him.

But he has three of his own, circling him and a fourth shambling toward his boy and he quickly dismisses his uncle as he throws himself into the fight.

They are silent but fast--they hadn't been Dead long. He snarls as one shambles closer and darts forward, biting at it's ankles until it crumples to the forest floor.

He spits out the rotted flesh and leaps on the second Dead, using his weight to bear it to the ground. Sharp fingers dig at his belly as he sinks his teeth into it's throat and he feels a white hot flare of pain before he snaps down and rips the Dead's throat out.

"Grey!" Mischief shouts and he felt a spasm of fear, searching for his uncle even as he sees the two Dead converging on his boy. Peter is dragging himself from the fourth Dead he has tried to kill, his hind legs crumpled and bloody below him.

Help Mischief, Peter orders and Derek spins.

Mischief screams a moment before the zombie catches him, falling into him, and Derek snarls, scrabbling for purchase as the weight pins him, as a hot putrid breath pours over his skin and teeth—

The Dead bites down and he howls, scrambling to get free as Mischief screams.

His boy is  all  wolf.

He heard a wet  thwap, and the Dead shambling toward Mischief falls in a bloody heap. The infected on his back makes a wet ripping sound, and Derek shudders under it, bucking to dislodge it before something heavy dives him into the ground and jars the Dead’s teeth in his shoulder.

Another blow made the teeth tighten and his world went white in agony before Mischief’s fingers were in his fur, shoving a the dead and Derek whimpers as it falls off him, a wet slide of smashed skull and broken teeth.

His shoulder feels like it has been shredded and he pushes to his feet shakily before he collapses back down.

“Oh, fuck,  fuck , what the fuck,” he chants, and Derek huffs, too tired to shush him. “What the hell, sweetwolf, what the fuck!  Grey, oh shit,  Grey.”

He can hear Mischief’s heart, beating too hard, too fast, panic rolling off him in waves, and he whimpers, licking at the boy’s hand in an attempt to sooth him.

His boy makes a noise, a broken little sob that makes Derek whine. He curls close around him, presses into Derek’s body and pets him.

Humans, Derek thinks, not for the first time, are strange. He whines and rolls his shoulders, a full body shake that aches deep in his bones. Already he can feel the skin knitting together, the blood slowing as he heals, his breathing slowing and evening out as the boy huddles around him like a shield and presses a wet face into the wolf’s neck.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he chants. “You shouldn’t have. Why the hell did you do that, oh my god, you got  bit.”

Derek huffs and Mischief sits up a little, running his hands over the wolf’s fur, searching frantically for the bite.

His hands slow and he scrambles over to Peter, feeling desperately along his haunches.

The wolf noses him away and Derek sighs as he stands. He’s limping a little, but it doesn’t register as deeply as it should—the way the boy is staring at him, his eyes wide and hurt—that registers.

He licks at the boy’s hand and Mischief jerks away, his eyes bright and furious.

Derek whines and the hand holding the bat tightens, angrily, before he stalks into the woods, headed back toward the den.

 


	8. the truth about Mischief

 

the truth about Mischief

 

They are sulking. _Both_ of them.

He wants, badly, to take his nephew by the scruff of his neck and _shake_.

Mischief--well. He could have told Derek this would happen, but Derek hadn’t been good at listening even before Laura died, and after, he was so close to feral Peter didn’t bother trying to reason with him.

Mischief though.

Mischief intrigues the werewolf.

He’s smart, with honey brown eyes that never stop _watching_ and Peter knows well enough that the boy has suspicions about the wolves who have adopted him. He hasn’t pushed at those suspicions, hasn’t confirmed them because Derek is almost vicious in protecting the boy, and because of the camp.

The tiny human camp existing on the edge of nothing, hiding from the human military and the werewolf packs.

They could have been safe, if they had stayed with one of those packs, with the military bands.

Maybe if they had, Mischief wouldn’t be an orphan now.

Now, with the truth glaring and undeniable, Peter has to wonder what the boy will do.

He wonders what Derek will do when Stiles tries to leave them.

~*~

The boy he knew in Beacon Hills was still marked by hope. He was quick tongued and quick witted, and only ever found stillness when the Dead pressed against the barriers and when he sat near the dying.

Peter wasn’t close to Stiles. He’d been too much of a predator for the Sheriff to ever really trust him around the boy, but he’d seen him. In the hospital and in the Sheriff’s home, sleeping on the couch, his face sooty after burning the dead. He remembered the strident voice that fills his den now, twisting and wheedling and imperious as he ordered another boy, a small child with floppy brown hair and crooked jaw, around like a little tyrant.

Peter _liked_ Stiles. He never allowed himself to linger on the boy, or why he was so fond of him, but occasionally, he’d find chocolate and slip it to the sheriff with a nod at the child, and then slide away before either could say anything.

But the boy who woke up in his den and looked at Derek in shock, the one who howls like a wolf and swings that bat like it’s an extension of his body--that is not a boy Peter remembers. He’s something new, carved out of the soft shell he had known, sharpened by this dying world and the years since Beacon Hills.

And if the child he remembers was fascinating. It is nothing like the boy who runs through the woods with him and smiles at the stars with tears on  his cheek.

That boy he doesn’t know and he has no idea what Stiles will do, now.

~*~

When they get to the den, Stiles crawls in and curls into himself, his back to the wolves. Derek whines and noses at him anxiously and Peter huffs a sigh.

_Leave him, nephew. He needs time._

Derek makes an unhappy noise in his throat. _Why_?

Peter sighs and shakes out his fur. _He doesn’t trust werewolves, and just found out what we are. We should have told him before it was shoved in his face like this._

Derek shifts, agitated and whimpers. _He is pack_.

_He is a human who refused werewolf protection,_ Peter says, gently. _Who just realized that he’s been living with just that for months._

Frankly, Peter was a little startled Stiles hadn’t bolted already.

_We have to shift. We have to talk to him._

Derek’s eyes narrow, red flickering in the edges and Peter steels himself for a fight.

_Why?_

Peter sighed, and nipped his nephew’s throat gently. _Because if we don’t, he’ll leave us._

~*~

After months of living in his wolfskin, being human again felt strange. The wind is cool against his skin and rocks dug into his feet as he tugs on some pants before padding toward the den.

It has been almost a day since the attack, and Stiles has yet to emerge from the den. Derek has grown increasingly worried until he finally consents to Peter shifting.

It isn’t enough, Peter thinks . Mischief won’t care about him. He never has. It’s Derek that needs to shift. Derek that Mischief wants.

He walks loudly, not bothering to mask his approach, and Derek creeps out of the den as he approaches, eyeing him sidelong with the wary caution Derek always gives him when he first shifts form.

He takes a breath, and then. “Stiles!”

Derek’s head snaps toward him, shock in his bright eyes that Peter ignores, even as he feels the questions reverberate through the pack bond to him.

He focuses on the sound of Stiles scrambling out of the den instead.

The boy clutches his bat, his eyes bright and furious, and his teeth bared. He stares at Peter with a wildness that makes a growl itch in the back of his throat, and he swallows it down by sheer force of will.

“So you finally decided to wear your real face, huh, Grey?”

He feels a twinge in his chest. He likes the name Stiles has given him, as much as he likes the one he had given the boy. “The wolf is just as much my real face as this one,” Peter says, mildly.  

He rolls his eyes and nods at Derek, “And him. Is he going to show his face?”

Derek snarls softly and turns away and Stiles makes an impatient huff. “Guess that’s my answer, then.”

“What do you want, Stiles?” Peter asks, cutting through the boy’s angst and anger.

His eyes narrow and he takes a half step towards the werewolf. “How the _fuck_ do you know my name?”

Derek’s sharp eyes pin him and he smiles, because he can _feel_ his alpha’s fury, his confusion.

“Stiles Stilinski. I think there is very little about you that I don’t know.”

There’s a furious, “You _dick_.”

And then Derek--not the black wolf, but _Derek_ \--was pulling Stiles away from him, shoving Peter back with a guttural snarl.

“Who the hell _are you_?” Stiles shouts, and Derek gave him a sharp shake.

“Calm down, Mischief. Calm _down_!”

Peter wonders just how feral his nephew looks--from the wide eyes in Stiles’ face, he thinks it must be very--as Derek holds him close and says, calm and implacable. “He’s going to tell you.”

Derek twists and glares at Peter, and Peter smiles tightly. “He’s going to tell you _everything_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek is human, yay!! And next update, we swing to Stiles' POV. See you Tuesday!


	9. Pack life

 

Holy. Shit.

It's not like he didn't _know_ they weren't normal wolves, but having the two furry four-legged companions he'd been hiding from the world with suddenly grow skin and stand up and fucking _talk_.

Holy. _Shit_.

Grey was still watching him with longsuffering patience edged with a badly hidden smirk, secrets in his ice blue eyes and Stiles shifted where he stood.

Grey as a human was vaguely discomforting, and he didn't know exactly why he wanted to hide behind Sweetwolf, but he knew he did.

Which brought him right back to Sweetwolf.

Which.

Jesus fucking Christ. If he'd known _that_ was what he was snuggling up to for the past few months, he might have forgotten everything his dad had said about werewolves, and accepted their damn protection.

He was tall, and muscular, with broad shoulders and a tight ass that made Stiles lose track of the whole conversation for a few minutes because who _wouldn't_ when presented with an ass like that.

The world was quite literally ending and Stiles wanted to make sure he had his priorities straight before it did.

Heh. Staight.

He snickered and both wolves gave him a curious concerned look and he rolled his eyes.

“You know his _name,”_ Sweetwolf snarls, and Stiles blinks.

Maybe Sweetwolf isn’t such an apt name for him, anymore.

“You do too, if you let yourself remember,” Grey says, lazily, and Stiles shifts.

“Enough,” he snaps. “Put some damn pants on, Sweetwolf. And both of you can tell me who the fuck you are.”

Peter’s head dips, just a little. “Peter. And you know my alpha, Derek.”

Derek rumbles, a threatening sound and turns to Stiles. “We--I should have told you,” he starts.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, coldly. “You really should have. What the hell?”

He shifts, looking for all the world like a scolded puppy. “You needed us,” he says, like that’s all there is that matters.

Maybe that is all that matters to him. Maybe in his weird wolfy mind, all that mattered was Stiles was dying and he stopped it.

Even though.

“You had to know I didn’t want to be beholden to a wolf pack,” Stiles says, his voice even.

Derek freezes, going still for a moment. “You--you aren’t.You aren’t _beholden_ to anyone, Stiles.”

“Derek,” Peter says, sharply and Derek snarls, his eyes flashing red for a heartbeat. “I think that’s enough for now, nephew.”

“He should know,” Derek says, his voice sharply insistent.

“Last time you decided what he should know,” Peter says, smoothly, “we ended up keeping a rather large secret for over two months. And look how wonderfully _that_ played out.”

Derek’s ears turned pink, which was actually adorable, but it didn’t change the fact that Peter was right.

“He’s _pack_ ,” Derek insists and Stiles goes very still.

After Beacon Hills--after they left, he figured out how the world worked. That zombies were the threat, but they were easy to avoid, and not that hard to kill.

Zombies were a fact of life but if he had to chose, he’d pick them over the human militants. The ones who treated the world like a never ending battlefield, who treated the humans they found like cannon fodder and foot soldiers.

And he would pick them both over werewolves. Because zombies would kill you but they were mindless in their killing, and the humans, they were fighting for _something._

The packs were just drunk on power and desperate to keep it from other wolves. They gathered humans into their hybrid packs like marbles in a collection, hoarded them, shoved them in dark dusty holes where they couldn’t be stolen.

Where, if the Alpha chose, they could be culled. The best chosen to be turned, and the turned killed to strengthen the pack’s power.

He heard sometimes, of packs that valued their human packmates, who wanted to protect them because that’s what pack _meant._

But in six years, he’d never once _seen_ it and he didn’t believe it actually existed.

“I’m not in your fucking _pack_ ,” he snarls, and Derek makes a hurt noise, flinching back as Stiles stalks away from the wolves.

~*~

He doesn't go far. He wants to--wants to walk until his legs give out and the damn werewolves can't find him.

But he isn't that stupid, or that selfish.

He might hate them right now, but Derek and Peter spent months keeping him alive, and he knows they'll follow if he goes too far.

There's too much out here that could kill him too damn easily.

But the feeling of the wolves press against him and he snarls under his breath, as he kicks a rock.

He shouldn't _be_ here.

Since the first time he woke up in their damn den, he knew that, like a fact of life. Scott was dead or worse. They’re all dead and Beacon Hills was--he shakes his head and turns his thoughts away from that because he can't think about Beacon Hills.

Can't think about what they left behind.

This is hard enough without adding fuel to the fire.

He doesn't actually understand why he's alive when his dad isn't. When Scott isn't.

He didn't understand it when he woke up to two wolves watching him, and he doesn't understand it now, and he _hates_ it.

The thing is--he doesn't _want_ to be dead.

He likes living. It goes against every ounce of him to think about dying, which might be why he fought so hard to live when he was given half a chance, might be why his bat weighs so perfect in his hand. He can't just lay down to die. It's not who he is.

But he never wanted to live through the end of the world, and he sure as hell doesn't want to do it without his dad and Scott.

"It isn't fair," he mutters. He eyes the mountains and wonders, idly, if there's a convenient ledge he could fall from. The wolves couldn't stop him, not if he tried hard enough, and even if he became the Dead, he'd be too broken to do any real damage to the average passerby.

He licks his lips.

"I think that is a very bad idea, Mischief."

“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” he says.

“Ohh, I don’t know.” Peter drawls. “I think you’re considering just how much your dead family would hate that you are with werewolves. Just how hard it would be to get away from us.” He pauses, and quieter, his voice no longer playful, “You’re thinking about how easily you could kill yourself in our little valley.”

He stiffens and Peter sighs. “You can hate him. But there is nothing my nephew won’t do to keep you safe. Do not ask him to find your body. Do not be that cruel, Stiles.”

“Would he let me go?” Stiles snaps.

Peter nods, easily and without hesitation. “He would hate it. But yes, if that is what you asked.”

That checks Stiles’ anger and he falters a little, not sure what to do with that. Peter smiles at him, lazy and mocking and stands. “Don’t stay out here too long. It’s not safe. Derek and I will let you have the den, tonight.”

Stiles watches him go and he wants to stop him, wants to ask how the _fuck_ the wolf knows his name, but he isn’t ready for that yet.

He isn’t ready to delve into Beacon Hills and all the baggage that came with it.

He’d been running pretty steadily from it for the better part of six years, and he saw absolutely no reason to change that now.

~*~

Derek has shifted by the time Stiles makes it back to the den, and he whines in greeting, slinking forward slowly, his belly dragging on the ground while Stiles watches, reluctantly amused.

“Oh my god, dude,” he finally huffs. “You’re a fucking werewolf. Act like a badass.”

Derek whines again and licks at his fingers, hopefully and Stiles sighs.

“You're fucking ridiculous, you know that? And this--it’s not like you can give me puppy eyes and expect me to forget you’ve been lying for months, dude. That was _not ok_.”

Derek’s tail thumped once in what Stiles was choosing to view as agreement.

“I’m still mad at you,” he tells the wolf, loftily and Derek barks, nosing at his chest hard enough that Stiles topples from his crouch to sprawl on his ass, and the wolf squirms into his lap.

“If you kill me,” Stiles gasps, “I’ll never forgive you.”

The wolf huffs against his neck, wet and warm and familiar and Stiles relaxes into the dirt, some of the tension draining out of him for now.

He feels safe and exhausted, and his wolves are here, familiar and protective and even though he's furious, he can't maintain the constant tension. He's too fucking tired to keep it up.

He pets a hand through Derek's fur, scratching behind his ears and the wolf's tail thumps on the dirt once, pleased.

"Don't think I'm not still pissed," Stiles says, weakly, and he licks at Stiles' neck.

He stays there as the day dies, and tries to not feel think about how content he feels.


	10. The angry boy

There's a dance happening that he finds endlessly fascinating. Maybe because he never had the chance to see Derek around people he cared for that weren't family.

There was, briefly, so briefly it shouldn't count, Paige.

But then, after Kate and the fire, Derek became almost reclusive as he hid from the world.

Stiles isn't pack, in the most technical sense of the word, and he isn't a wolf. He's loud and human, and flits between wide bright smiles and fury, and fills up all the spaces between with biting sarcasm that makes him laugh even when Derek doesn't.

But the dance between Derek and Stiles is fascinating. If only because Derek is acting like a puppy trying to court a mate, and Stiles moves from ignoring him completely and accepting his affection with the confidence that says he deserves nothing less.

It has the poor wolf spinning circles and Peter is petty enough to find it  _ hilarious _ .

Stiles is tucked in the den now, doing god knows what, and Peter suns himself, head tipped back to the warmth and light.

Sometimes he thinks he would have made a better werecat than wolf.

A barely there noise catches his attention and he peeks an eye open as Derek slinks into camp. He pads on big silent paws to the entrance of the den and settles on his haunches, letting the three squirrels rest in the dirt. He's quiet, patient, eyes intent on the den, and Peter smiles.

Stiles never has that kind of patience, but Derek always does.

It's a strange dichotomy, the two of them. Stiles in perpetual motion and quick witted thoughtlessness, Derek with his slow, deep mind and willingness to wait hours as the world happens around him.

They aren’t completely different though, Peter muses.

There is the way they both love their families, with a fierceness that borders on obsessive. He smiles a little, closes his eyes to allow his nephew to wait in peace.

He wonders, idly, how Stiles will receive today's presents.

"Squirrels," Stiles says flatly, when he emerges from the den, his ropes curled around his chest, bat in hand. There's dirt on his face, scrubbed in and he smells faintly like salt and bitterness and Peter hears Derek whine.

"This doesn't fix anything, Derek. Fuck you."

He shoves past the wolf, and Peter rolls to his feet.

"Stay here," he murmurs, low enough that Stiles can't hear, but plenty loud enough for his miserable looking nephew.

Then he follows Stiles into the trees.

Stiles doesn't hesitate as he tromps through the woods, moving loud and heavy enough that Peter has to swallow a smile at the intentional display of temper. He schools his face to impassive and follows at a distance, until Stiles finally stops and spins to face him with a huff.

"What the hell do you want, creeperwolf?"

"Stiles," Peter says, chiding, "That's just mean."

Stiles snorts and drops to his knees to lay out another snare. He's got two rabbits and a few eggs in the bag at his back and Peter sighs, catching the boy by the scruff of his neck and dragging him along.

The blackberry bush is fragrant and ripe, the branches hanging heavy with fruit and Stiles makes a happy noise in his throat as he shoves a handful in his mouth and starts stripping the bush and shoving handfuls into his bag. Peter helps him and for a time, they work silently, until Stiles finally say, through a mouthful of berries, "What do you want?"

"You to chew with your mouth closed, for one," Peter says, mildly.

Stiles gives him a mulish sort of glare, but swallows obediently and quirks an eyebrow.

"How long do you plan on punishing him." Peter asks, bluntly and Stiles shrugs.

"He lied to me."

"So did I," Peter points out. "And those lies saved your life. Do you expect us to apologize for that."

"You don't even think you should!" Stiles hisses.

"No. Because you are alive. And you can be furious--but you are  _ alive _ to be so. I won't apologize for that. And Derek won't, no matter how you punish him. Don't ever expect us to do that."

"Why?" Stiles snarls, shoving into Peter's space. "Why the hell do either of you give a shit about some puny human?"

His heart is beating too fast, and he smells like doubt and fear and Peter wants to shove him down until the boy respects the strength of his wolf. Instead he remains very still and says very dryly, "Don't play at being stupid, Stiles. We both know better. It's not a good look for you."

Stiles snarls at him, and stalks away, his hands shoving through his hair. "I didn't ask for this," he says. "I didn't ask you to drag me out of that deathcamp."

"Would you rather we had left you there?" Peter says silkly and Stiles's back snaps straight. "We could have left you there, and you'd be dead right now. Is that what you would like, Mischief?"

"Yes," he says, and Peter smiles, sharp and amused.

"Liar," he murmurs and Stiles flushes, looking away.

"You matter to him." Peter says simply. "To both of us. And I have waited five years for Derek to care about anything enough to wake up."

Stiles pauses, staring at Peter, his eyes sharp and searching. "I won't apologize for what keeps you or him alive. And right now, you're keeping each other alive. Maybe instead of punishing him for that, you should be trying to figure out why a feral wolf has chosen to shift for the first time in five years, for you. Why you matter to him."

He could add more, but Stiles is watching him with those impossibly big eyes and his fingers are stained blue by the berries and he is suddenly exhausted, too tired to deal with this idiot. He shouts Derek's name and when he can hear his nephew approaching, he retreats, leaving a thoughtful and silent Mischief in his wake.


	11. Adjustment

Adjustment 

Stiles favorite time of day was when he first woke up.

He always woke when the birds started singing, and he'd curl deeper into the warmth of Derek, pressed into his side. His arm, around the wolf's ribs, would tighten just a little and Derek would make a pleased little rumble before Stiles sank deeper into sleep.

He would wake for the day some indiscernible time later, when Derek licked at his cheek and Peter nipped at his ankle, and he'd lay in stillness and pet through Derek's hair.

It is the only time of the day he allows himself to bask in the comfort of Derek's presences, the only time he isn't  overly aware that he is being sheltered by a pack when it is the last thing in the world he's ever wanted.

Eventually, Peter stands and trots from the den and Derek puts his big head on Stiles' chest and stare at him with wide, unblinking eyes as Stiles tells him all the things he wants to do during the day.

It is only after he crawled out of the den and into the morning light that he felt that nearness slip away, that he remembers all the reasons he was pissed at the wolf.

He loves those mornings, but he always feels guilty for them.

~*~

He still runs. After eating a bit of the meat cooked the night before, and throwing berries for Derek to snatch from the air, he straps his shoes on as tight as he can. Peter wanders away to do whatever the fuck it is Peter does on his own, and Stiles jogs through the woods, taking game trails in the cool morning stillness. When he runs, all he can hear is the pounding of his feet on the ground and his heart in his chest and the rough rasp of his breath.

But he never goes alone. Stiles thinks sometimes that he'd like to be alone, but every time he even hints at it, Derek stares at him with impassive eyes that flares red.

And then he promptly ignores Stiles and trots patiently at the human's heels, like some kind of overgrown fucking puppy.

It’s as annoying as it is reassuring. He doesn’t  _ need _ a fucking guard dog and he bitches about it, tells Peter that he doesn’t  _ want an escort  _ while Derek sprawls by their fire. Peter nods seriously and then stands. “Maybe you don’t, but he’ll stay with you anyway,” he says, simply, and then vanishes into the forest.

But--as much as he dislikes Derek’s constant shadowing--he will admit, to himself, in the privacy of his own head where no one else is invited--that he likes the company.

Derek doesn't like his running. He can see it in the way Derek presses close to him, in the way he never strays far from Stiles. He can feel it in the way the wolf's breath puffs against his ankles, anxious and close. He can see it in the way he watches the trees, worried and watchful, like he is constantly on guard, constantly concerned about what could possibly threaten Stiles.

It's amusing and annoying--idly, Stiles wonders if the wolf realizes he survived six years of zombie related danger without ever once having a werewolf to trot at his heels, six years of staying safe and unbitten without a fuckign supernatural creature listening out for the dangers that might lurk in the woods.

He thinks about saying that, sometimes, but he doesn't think it'll do any good, so he keeps his mouth shut and ignores the wolf, until Derek nips at his heels, steering him away from a game trial, and he doesn't ask why he just lets himself be herded in that quiet way of the wolfs.

The truth is he doesn't  _ want  _ to trust Derek or Peter, but he  _ does _ and he hates himself for that.

He's pretty confident that Derek hates himself too, so it works for them.

He jogs for miles, never really paying attention to where he's going. It's never mattered. Whenever he's done running, he turns and tells Derek, "Let's go home," and the wolf immediately turns them to the fastest path back to the den.

He knows if Derek had his way, Stiles would never leave the den, but that's not practical and just flat out never happening.

The trip back home is always slower, and Derek gives Stiles time to pick berries and greens for their meals, to forage for nuts. Once, he even found a honeycomb in a hive full of bees. Derek and Peter had to smoke it out and retrieve it, but the sticky sweetness lasted them days and Stiles still daydreams about finding another.

"We should start thinking about winter," he says, quietly, almost to himself. Almost. He knows damn well that Derek is listening, just like he always is.

Derek whines quiet agreement, and then his ears prick forward.

Stiles glances at the trees, and sees a flash of movement a split second before Derek snarls.

He has one chance to howl, a sharp cry for Peter before the Dead shamble out of the trees, three of them. One is fast, newly turned, her eyes almost completely clear. If it weren't for the gaping wound where her jaw should be, Stiles could almost believe she was still alive.

If.

She lunges forward, her fingers hooked into claws, a low cry in her throat as Derek leaps at the first Dead. Stiles hears a wet crunch and the thud of a body before the Dead is on him and he swings his knife up and into her eye.

There's a sickening  _ pop _ that makes his stomach heave and then she drops, a puppet with cut strings, and he looks over to find Derek standing on the third Dead, his sides heaving and his muzzle wet with things Stiles  _ really _ doesn't want to think too deeply about.

He swallows hard and shakes his blade, knocking off blood and rotting brain matter.

"C'mon. There's a stream about a half mile up. We can rinse off there."

Derek barks in agreement and shifts to his feet.

The fourth Dead comes out of nowhere, shambling out of the brush and landing on Derek before either of them can react. Its older--probably bit and turned the others--and slower, but it's vicious and Derek yelps, a high pained noise as Stiles curses and scrambles over on hands and knees, bringing his dirty knife down on the Dead’s skull. It crumples and Stiles shoves at it, his hand sinking through its rotted gut before he can shove it aside.

“Oh that's so gross,” he whines and Derek huffs, weakly amused.

“Shut up, you  _ ass, _ ” he almost hisses, searching for the bite. “Just cause you can heal like some supernatural freak doesn't mean it makes any easier for me to  _ watch  _ you get bitten.”

Peter bursts into the tiny glade at a dead run and Derek growls at him, shoving Stiles back a step until his senses catch up with him and realizes who the hell is snarling and snapping at them.  

Derek stumbles on the third step, and Stiles ducked, wrapping an arm around him and burying his face in the wolf’s fur to avoid Peter’s gaze, petting his fur and muttering into it, “You fucking  _ idiot.” _

Derek’s tail wagged lazily as he licked at the tear tracks on his cheeks and waits as Stiles’ gets his shit together.

It occurs to Stiles, later, when they’re tucked into the den and his skin is clean and smells of dirt and cold water, that Peter came for him, even knowing that it was dangerous. That Derek got  _ bitten _ for him.

It occurs to him that whatever else his wolves want, they’re very invested in keeping him safe.

He sleeps easier, and only hates himself a little bit, for that.

~*~

It isn't always training and conditioning.

There's the afternoons when he sprawls in the dirt near the den and Derek lays down, leaning heavy against his side and they doze like that, sleepy puppies. Sometimes Peter finds them and he always flushes when that happens, because the calculating look in Peter's eyes would make any sane person squirm.

But on the days when he doesn't find them acting like littermates in a fucking Normal Rockwell painting, Stiles sometimes talks to Derek.

Well.

He talks all the time.

Peter tells him to shut up, actually, because he talks all the fucking  _ time _ .

But there's talking, chattering to fill up the empty spaces and there's talking, the kind of talking he does when Derek is sitting near him, head on his crossed paws, eyes closed and ears pricked to catch his words.

One day, Stiles is going to ask Peter what Derek actually understands. If it's words or just a general tone of emotions, like a dog.

Depending on just how honest he's feeling at any given point in time, he finds his opinions on which he'd prefer wavering.

Still. For all that he holds tight to his anger, and his distrust--when it’s just the two of them and he is sleepy and quiet, he talks.

“I used to hate how boring it was, back in Beacon Hills. I was always alone, you know, Dad worked and it sucked, but I was used to it. And maybe it’s because I was used to it that I hated it. Maybe because it was so goddamn normal.” He laughs, a bitter noise, and shakes his head. “I fucking  _ miss _ normal. I miss being able to take my damn bike to Scotty’s house without wondering if something was going to eat me.”

Derek blinked at him, and Stiles huffs. “I used to spend a lot of time at home alone. Dad worked, and after mom--well. I spent some time at the station with Dad, but I got in more trouble than not, so he’d leave me at home with one of the dispatch radios. I’d make myself dinner and listen to the radio. Sometimes, he’d come on just to talk to me. Other kids got bedtime stories and TV shows and I got the county sheriff’s department, drunk and disorderlies. I knew every code before I was eleven. And I was curious, you know. I used to want to know  _ everything.  _ I got a subscription to all the major newspapers, read everything up and down the west coast, listened to police blotters and the crazies who hosted to podcasts. I loved it. “

He stares up at the trees, at the leaves swaying and the sky, further than that, and the white clouds that make him think of a life that he can barely remember, chasing his mom around the park while his dad laughed and laying on his back, licking a popsicle while they stole kisses, and white fluffy clouds scuttled across the sky.

“That’s how I found out about it. I heard the news from the crackpot conspiracy theories. Everyone said they were crazy.”

Derek whines and Stiles summons a smile he doesn’t feel, something that cracks across his face as the wolf licks at his chin. “Sure fucking showed us who was crazy, huh.”  

Derek noses at him and Stiles huffs as he leans against the wolf. "You don't know what you've got til it's gone, right? Isn't that the way it goes? I knew what I had. I heard enough on the scanner, saw enough with Scotty's shithead dad to know--it wasn't perfect, it was boring and I was lonely, but I  _ knew  _ that what I had with my Dad,  _ knew _ we were good."

A woodpecker breaks the silence, and he blinks back tears. "I wish we could go back to that. To the way the world was before Erab. Even if I was bored and lonely sometimes, it was better than this."

The wolf whines softly in distress and there's a part of him that would take the words back but it's still true. Even if it meant he'd never meet Derek, he'd take it all back. In a fucking heartbeat, he'd take it all back, go back to the beginning, firebomb the whole lab to kill Erab before it killed the whole goddamn world.

Even after the outbreak, he hadn't thought they'd ever leave Beacon Hills. "Do you ever think about it?" he asks. "Peter says he knew me, so you had to have been there, right? You had to have been in Beacon Hills."

He cranes his head around, looking at Derek who blinks wide black eyes at him. "I wish I remembered you there," he murmurs and the wolf nips at his fingers, a careful bite that strings a smile across Stiles' lips.

"We didn't want to leave, but you know how it got in the end. It was a death trap and Dad wouldn't bend to Duc, so we took off." He huffs out a laugh. "They offered me a place. In Duc's house, if you can believe that. But I couldn't--I didn't want to leave my dad. And I never wanted the Bite."

And he wasn't meant to be the plaything of an alpha, not even one like Deucalion.

He doesn't add that because isn't that what he is now? An Alpha's pet.

He's everything his father had tried to keep him from becoming, and he wonders how many times he'll run from Alphas in this world.

They're almost worse than fucking Dead, he thinks, bitterly.

Dad would hate this, if he could see you now, he thinks, broken.

It's a familiar fact, one that mocks him every fucking time he wakes up in the den, warm from Derek's comforting presence, with Peter's sharp gaze on the entrance, guarding him from any danger.

_ He would hate what you've become. _

It's that more than anything that makes him sit up. He's been with the wolves for almost three months, and summer is drawing to a peak, and he  _ knows _ he has to think about winter. They're too high in the mountains for him to not think about it.

And he can't stay here, can't pretend the rest of the world has stopped existing, just because he has fallen in with two werewolves.

He remembers what he heard, a few days before the attack on their camp, the whispers of rumors coming from the coast.

"Derek," he says, and his voice is remarkably steady, something Stiles is stupidly pleaded by.

"I can't stay here, Derek. I have to go. Soon."


	12. Packmates

Stiles finds it vaguely amusing that a fucking  _ werewolf _ can sulk. Derek's been pouting since they walked home, since Stiles announced he had to leave. The wolf's eyes had flashed red once, but he hadn't actually argued, and Stiles thinks that's mostly because he's a  _ wolf _ .

But he's been sulking all damn afternoon and it took Peter less than thirty seconds after returning to the den to put together his nephew's stubborn silence and distance from Stiles with the boy's aggressively skinning a squirrel.

He heaved a sigh and mutter something about the end of the world ending petty dramas, that Stiles and Derek both ignored.

It wasn't Stiles' fault.

He didn't  _ ask _ to be saved by a damn werewolf with dependency issues. He didn't want to be saved at all.

So maybe the werewolf wasn't the  _ only  _ one sulking.

"You want to leave," Peter says, apropos nothing, and Stiles flicks an annoyed look at Derek's head.

"So you can talk to him. And he can understand what I'm saying. Clearly."

Peter laughs, "We're werewolves, Stiles. Even in his wolf form, Derek is still a man. He knows exactly what you're saying." A sly smile twists his lips, "I'd imagine he knows much of what you aren't saying, for that matter."

Stiles glares at him and Peter smirks.

"Why the hell does it matter where I want to go? He won't let me leave."

Peter pauses and across from him, Derek lurches to his feet, almost stumbling, and Stiles blinks at him. It's the first time since he woke up that he's seen the wolf anything less than graceful.

"Where do you want to go," Peter asks, softly, and Stiles bites his lip, redirecting his attention to Peter.

Stiles licks his lips. "When--when did you leave Beacon Hills?"

"With Parrish. Before you and the Sheriff did. We saw the writing on the wall--Derek would never have been able to stand up to Deucalion and his pack. We bolted as soon as I heard he was coming to Beacon Hills."

Stiles nods. He wants to be bitter about that, but he can't. Not when he saw just how ruthless Deucalion was, just how determined he was.

Getting out before the pack descended is all that kept both Peter and Derek alive.

"We left two months after they hit town. Dad had it pretty well in hand, before that. We were holding our own. It wasn't perfect, but we saved more than we didn't. But Deucalion--we couldn't stand up against him. And you know what it was like. The military was breaking down and gobbling up what they could and civvies were just fodder for them. The packs saw it the same way."

"They're wrong, you know," Peter interjects, and it startles Stiles into looking up at him. "That isn't what a human in a wolf pack should be. You aren't meant to be pawns in a game."

"Well, maybe in the world before Erab that was true," Stiles says dryly, "but you needed us more than we needed you, then. And now all the power is in your favor and we're just fighting to stay alive in a world hell bent on killing us."

"There were almost fifty of us who left Beacon Hills. Not as many as when Parrish left, but we weren't alone, and Dad knew what he was doing. We were going to be fine."

_ Fine _ . He remembers when he was stupid enough to believe that. When he believed his father could keep him safe from the monsters.

"The infected aren't the only thing to be scared of," he says. "They aren't even what killed most of us."

"What did?" Peter asks, softly.

"There was this girl with us. Lydia. I'd--her mother died, a few months into the siege of Beacon Hills, and Dad brought her home. We became a sort of catch all for the orphans of the infection, and I didn't mind because I liked having people at home, to take care of. And I'd loved Lydia forever. She didn't even know I existed, until she was sharing my shower and making fun of the way I made waffles. She--she got really attached to another kid staying with us. Jackson. And they came with us, when we left Beacon Hills. It was good, for a long time. We learned to avoid people, learned to rig traps for the Dead. We were surviving, and sometimes it even felt like living, even if we lived in a really weird way. But then, about a year, maybe two now, Jackson and Scott--my best friend, Scott--they, um. They got bit. The Dead. There were three of them and they were on patrol and it just--it was shitty."

“What happened?”

“We left. But Lydia didn’t. She—something broke in her, after Jackson. I tried to get her to come with us, but she just got away from us that night and went back.”

Peter’s eyes narrow consideringly. “You want to go back for her.”

Stiles nods. “I have to. I have to know.”

“You  _ do  _ know. She’s dead. You have to realize that—she’s a single girl in a world full of things trying to kill her, and it’s been two years, Stiles.”

“But what if she wasn’t.”

Peter pauses, and gives him a pitying sort of look, one that makes Stiles bristle. “You’re smarter than that, Mischief.”

“I found a couple werewolves, a few months before the attack. They were omegas, and if they were anything else, Dad would have adopted them into our group. He didn’t, because we couldn't handle the kind of attention bringing werewolves into the group would have brought us. But they talked about a pack they ran from, on the coast in north Cali. They talked about a human girl with hair the color of blood and the will of an alpha who screamed like death.”

“And you think it’s her.”

“I know it is,” he says, steady as the moon. “There’s only one person on the West coast who fits that description, and she’s different--the Dead never touched her the way they did the rest of us. She could have survived.”

Peter frowns. “Different. How?”

Stiles shrugs a little. “She knew things. She couldn’t tell us  _ how _ _  
_ she knew them, but she knew things. She could tell when the Dead were getting close to us. She kept us alive, as much as my dad did.”

Derek snarled and stood, shaking himself once before he trotted into the   
woods. Stiles watches and then turns his attention back to Peter.

“We were going back, when we got attacked,” he says and Peter stares at him, impassive.

“Have you considered that the omegas were a trap?”

Stiles’ expression goes cold. “Oh, did you think of that? So did we. Yeah. Except that we were ambushed by militia, not Pack, and you fucking know it—you could scent the damn place when you picked me up.”

He wants to ask what else they could scent.

He wants to ask about his father and how long the dead had been dead when Peter and Derek found him.

He wants to ask and he doesn’t want to know.

“Where are they?” Peter asks, and Stiles blinks at him.

“Um. There’s this little town, on the coast near the Washington border. We think they’re holed up there. The pack is led by a coyote named Theo. They told stories--about experiments and people vanishing in the city, and how the Dead don’t touch it. It--you can’t make up the shit they told me, Peter.”

Peter blinks at Stiles, disbelieving and he shrugs. “Just tellin’ you what I’ve heard.”

There’s a rustle in the woods and Stiles straightens. He likes Peter, he does, but being near Derek settles him in a way the older man can’t touch. He glances past the fire and his breath catches as Derek emerges from the trees.

He  _ knows,  _ ok.

He’s known for days, what Derek is. Knows that hidden under the claws and fangs, under the dense fur, was  _ this _ . But it was still so strange, being confronted with it head on.

Surprise flicks across Peter’s face as they both stare at Derek. And fuck, there’s a lot to stare at. The long limbs and gleaming skin, the dark hair and stubble and jesus  _ fuck _ the muscles.

He swallows hard and licks his lips and those eyes, the only thing familiar about Derek in this form, flick to him.

“Would you like some clothes, nephew?” Peter asks, blandly, and Stiles looks away quickly, flushing as Derek pushes past him with a snarl.

“Don’t worry, Mischief,” Peter grins, “he’s always this friendly.”

"I know this is really fucking difficult for you, but  _ try _ not to be an ass," Stiles snarks back and it causes Peter to laugh, his shoulders shaking silently.

"That's not actually Peter's strong suit," a voice, higher than expected and hitting low in his gut, comes from behind Stiles and he twists to grin at Stiles.

"Pot, meet kettle," Peter calls lazily, but Stiles barely notices. Derek is wearing a tight pair of jeans, unbuttoned and clenches a henley in one hand. His hair is messy and his feet are bare and he looks even better like this than as a wolf curled at Stiles feet, and ok,  _ that's _ a the strangest thought he's ever had.

"You didn't have to shift," Stiles says, not what he meant to say, but the first thing that spills out and Derek flushes, his head dipping down.

The tips of his ears are pink and he shuffles nervously. "We couldn't talk," he mumbles.

Stiles almost pushes. Almost demands to know why that matters now, just to see how far he can shove Peter.

Instead he nods and nudges the fish at Derek. "Then eat. We'll talk after."

Derek sit awkwardly, watching the fire in silence that would be comfortable if he weren’t six foot of solid muscle and scowls and sad eyes. He is, though, and Stiles resigns himself to doing his best to ignoring that whole mess as he cleans and cooks the fish Derek had caught earlier.

He doesn’t speak at all, until Stiles passes him three burnt fish and then only to murmur, “Thank you,” before he ate with quick, neat bites, his eyes on his food and flicking to Stiles occasionally. When Stiles finishes, still hungry and wishing he’d stopped for berries, Derek passes back fish in silence and for a moment he considers refusing it. But something about the lowered gaze and the way Peter is watching them makes him take the fish and eat quietly as Derek tosses his bones into the bushes and licks the grease from his fingertips.

It’s only when Stiles sighs and drops his bones into the fire that Derek shifts his attention to the boy, fully.

It’s a strange and familiar thing, being on the other end of that intense stare, and he resists the urge to reach out and see if Derek’s hair is softer than his fur.

“You can’t go,” Derek says, simply.

For a moment, the words don’t sink in and then they do and his spine snaps straight.

“Well, that was a bad way to go about it,” Peter mumbles and stands.

Stiles barely registers the older wolf’s retreat. “What the fuck do you mean, I can’t go?”

“It’s too dangerous,” Derek says, simple, like it  _ is  _  simple, like that matters, like the whole fucking world isn’t dangerous. “And it isn’t her.”

Stiles snarls. “It’s  _ her,” _ he snaps, and Derek pauses, his head tilting as he studies Stiles.

“Even if it is Lydia,” he says, and how the hell did he manage to nail patronizing down in the hour they sat around a fucking campfire? “You’ve been apart for two years. Do you think she needs to be rescued? Do you think she  _ wants _ to be pulled away from whatever life she’s built there?  _ You _ didn’t.”

Stiles stares at him, his mouth hanging open, and his chest burning.

Derek stares back, impassive.

“You—you don’t  _ know _ ,” Stiles spits, furious and Derek nods.

“I don’t,” he says. “And neither do you. She could be happy and you could waltz in and fuck everything up. And what about Peter and I? Do you really think we can walk in there with you?”

That draws Stiles up short and he blinks at Derek. “Why—you aren’t coming with me. I’d never ask you to come with me, it’s too dangerous.”

“So you will put yourself in danger without us?” Derek demands and Stiles looks away.

“Look, I get you couldn’t just leave me to die in camp. But I’m ok now. I’m all better—better than better.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “You’re pack, Stiles. You aren’t going into another alpha’s territory alone.”

The world wobbles under him at those offhand words. Like they’re irrefutable fact and not something he’s been trying to avoid for the better part of six years. Derek gives him a curious look and he laughs a little, shaky. “I’m not—Derek, I’m not your pack. I’m just a useless human.”

Derek snarls at him, and for just a second, as his teeth length and his eyes gleam, he’s the wolf Stiles has gotten used to and it steadies everything shaking around him.

“ _ My pack, _ ” Derek snarls and Stiles pets a hand down his shoulder, careful and curious and Derek sighs, the power and gleaming eyes bleeding away and sagging into Stiles’ touch.

“Your pack,” Stiles agrees and Derek huffs, curling into Stiles to press into the nape of his neck, and inhaling.

He’s been living with wolves now for months and it’s strange, but not that strange, in the grand scheme of things. And it relaxes something low in his gut, a tension that had been curling tighter ever since Derek stepped out of the woods on two feet instead of four.

“You had a pack, before,” Stiles prompts and Derek hums an agreement against his shoulder.

He takes a deep breath and says, quiet but firm, “If you could get them back, even though it was dangerous and upset your new pack. Would you? Would you even hesitate?”

Derek jerks away from him, his eyes wide and hurt and Stiles feels his heart tripping over, wants to reach out for him and drag the wolf back, sooth the hurt in his eyes.

“She’s—she’s.” Derek whines and shakes his head and Stiles sits very still and waits because he’s explained in the only way a werewolf like Derek will understand. Now it’s just a matter of if Derek will stop him or not.

Stiles isn’t stupid enough to think Derek couldn’t stop him, if he wanted.

“She’s your pack,” Derek murmurs and Stiles nods. Thinks of Scott and his dad, of Lydia ordering them around and Jackson bitching and the way the world hadn’t felt like it was ending when they were all together.

“She is,” he admits, his heart aching for everything he’d lost.

Derek nods. “We’ll leave in two days.”

For a second Stiles gapes at the wolf, and then, “ We?”

Derek nods, his eyes solemn. “She is pack,” he says. “The pack will find her together.”

Derek stood and started back to the woods.

“Thank you,” Stiles blurts out, his eyes tracking Derek with a desperation he’d be embarrassed about if it were anyone but  _ Derek. _

The werewolf pauses, his head tilted in a distinctly canine manner that strings a smile across Stiles’ lips. “For what?”

He shrugs, and gives up a shy smile. “Saving me. Believing me.”

_ Everything. _

Derek’s shoulders droop, like he understands what Stiles isn’t saying, and the boy stands, rubbing his hands on his pants. He knows the shifty way that Derek is standing, caught halfway between their fire and the wild trees and he wants to keep him, here, like this, so badly it makes his hands shake.

“Come to bed,” he says, quietly and Derek inhales sharply.

“Stiles,” he whispers, taking a half step back.

“Just. Once? Just once, Derek. I--I know you don’t like being human. And I won’t ask for it. But just once, before we leave, will you give me this?”

His heart is pounding and for a moment, as the fire crackles between them and the wind moves through the pine, he thinks Derek will bolt.

Stiles wouldn’t even blame Derek for it, if he did.

But then he takes a step closer, and Stiles can  _ breath _ , as he crawls into their den and Derek crouches behind him.

It’s different, like this. They’ve spent every night for the past three months curled together like puppies, Derek’s heavyweight familiar as it grounded him and kept him warm and Peter kept a quiet watch.

But this. Derek is a long line of warm flesh, close behind him without actually touching him and it makes him feel lost, nervous and untethered.

“Stiles?” Derek asks, curiosity and concern in his voice and Stiles huffs a sigh.

“This is weird.”

Derek doesn’t move but he can  _ feel _ the withdrawal, the hurt pull back and he huffs, rolling and catching the other man and tugging him back.

“I like you like this. But I’m used to the wolf.”

“The wolf is still me,” Derek says, carefully and Stiles nods.

“I know, big guy. But. It’s different cuddling a puppy and cuddling,” he waves a hand at all of Derek. “All this.”

There’s a sulky set to Derek’s lips, a scowl between his eyes that’s fucking  _ adorable _ and Stiles smoothes his thumb over the crease between two scowling eyebrows. “What don’t you like about that?”

Derek tucks himself into Stiles, pressing into the warm skin of his neck. “I’m not a puppy,” he grumps and Stiles grins into his hair, petting a hand down Derek’s back and getting a low whine for his troubles.

“No, definitely not a puppy. Big bad wolf.”

“Damn straight,” Derek mutters and Stiles does laugh at that. Derek peers up at him with a grin and Stiles gives him a loose smile.

“I like you, like this,” he confides. “You don’t joke with me when you’re a wolf.”

Derek’s eyebrows furrow, a tiny frown on his lips. “It’s hard,” he says.

Stiles is quiet, petting his back soothingly and Derek says, “After--after Beacon Hills, it was easier, to be a wolf. I missed her less.”

“Who?” Stiles asks, gentle.

“My alpha. Laura.”

“Laura. Oh shit, Laura  _ Hale?” _

Derek hums into his skin and Stiles makes a choked noise, shaking him by his shoulders. “Dude, you’re a fucking Hale?”

Derek shrugs. “It’s not a big deal, anymore. The pack is dead. It’s just me and Peter, now.” He glances at Stiles before he says, shyly, “And you.”

Stiles nods and tugs the man closer, snuggling like children in the dark and whispers it like a promise into his hair, “And me.”

Derek seems to sigh with relief at that, all of the tension flowing out of his body as he shifted and squirmed until he was comfortable, curled against Stiles back. The back of the den was close to his face, a familiar earthy smell in the dark mixing with the warm heat and clean sweaty scent of Derek all around him.

“Sleep now,” Derek says, pressing against Stiles from toe to forehead, his arms hot bands of pressure around his waist and across his shoulders.

Stiles squirms back into his embrace and hopes like hell he doesn’t wake up humping his alpha, and lets the familiar comfort of Derek tug him into sleep.


	13. Unexpected developments

 

He watches from the trees, where Mischief won’t see him.

He knows that Derek is aware of him, can feel his annoyance tugging along the pack bond like a toothache, but he’s adept at ignoring Derek’s moods.

It’s interesting, watching them interact. Derek is quiet but Stiles makes up for that, chattering a mile a minute, his laughter ringing through the forest as they pack up everything in the den. He babbles about supplies and Lydia and the pack who is keeping her, and what they would do after finding her, and a thousand other useless banalities that Peter tuned out, even as he noticed something very important.

Stiles talked constantly, and he didn’t always say anything. But when he was still and silent near the fire in the evening, when he was deep in thought as he twined his ropes and made his traps--then he was utterly brilliant.

And Derek….

When he found his nephew crouched over Stiles in the snow, he had thought that maybe the boy could be helpful in bringing Derek back to his humanity.

But he didn’t expect  _ this _ . The quiet way that Derek orbits Stiles. It’s there in every move his nephew makes. He thought he had seen glimpses of it, when Derek trotted after Stiles as a wolf, when his gaze followed the boy with a startling intensity.

But this.

He didn’t expect this, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

With Derek or Stiles.

~*~

“We’re going to follow him, then?” Peter asks, lazily and Derek shifts. He’s nervous, something Peter doesn’t do anything to dispel. “You know the girl is dead.”

“Stiles disagrees. And he is pack.”

There’s no denying that. Stiles might not be able to feel it, but he can, and he knew Derek can, the bond that ties them both to human boy. He didn’t expect  _ that _ either.

“We’re going to get ourselves killed,” he mutters.

“We’re going to keep Stiles alive,” Derek corrects and Peter tilts his head, silent acquiescence.

“We still have the family vault in Seattle, we can winter there, after we retrieve the girl,” Peter says.

Derek nods, and moves away, the discussion settled in his mind.

It wasn’t, Peter thought to himself, watching Derek shift to stand near Stiles, a bad thing.

Unexpected, but not a bad thing.

So long as the boy continued to trust him, this new development wasn’t a bad thing at all.

~*~

Stiles looks  up, startled, when Peter wanders into their little grove, two packs on his back and a pair of keys dangling from one finger.

“Dude, you found us a  _ car? _ ”

“Stiles, do you have any idea how far the coast is? Of course I found a car.” Peter huffs, dropping the bags and stepping away. “Clothing and provisions, and something for the girl, if we find her.”

“When we find her,” Stiles corrects absently, his fingers already scrambling to open the bags. Peter slaps his hands away and Derek growls softly at him.

“I wanna see!” Stiles protests, annoyed.

“You can see tomorrow, on the road. It’s getting late and if we’re leaving in the morning like you wanted, I suggest you finish gathering your traplines.”

Stiles glares and Peter smiles, bright and shiny and completely insincere.

“C’mon, Stiles,” Derek says, tugging lightly on his wrist. “They’ll still be there in the morning.”

Grumbling, the boy follows Derek into the trees and Peter hums quietly as he trails after them.

~*~

“Is it strange, to be leaving?” Stiles asks. The fire is dwindling in front of them, and Peter stares up at the treetop, happier to search for stars than to watch the strange dance Mischief and his nephew are doing.

They both reek of  _ want _ , but neither seems to be willing to make the first move. Peter wonders, idly, how much things will change when they find the girl.

Oh, lord. Even he is saying  _ when  _ now.

“No,” Derek says.

Stiles gives him a startled look and Derek shrugs. “We were on our way here, when we found you. It would be stranger, being here without you than to leave with you.” He glances around, something soft and wistful  about his expression before he shrugs. “We don’t get to stay anywhere long, anymore. It was time to move on. You’re giving us a direction.”

Stiles nods, understanding in his eyes that makes Peter’s chest ache unpleasantly.

“Do you ever miss it?” Stiles asks, softly and Derek frowns, confused. “A home. A real home.”

Derek doesn’t answer, just tugs Stiles closer to him as the fire dies out and Peter stares into the sky, his eyes glowing as he searched for the constellations Talia taught him when they were children.

Yes. He misses home so much, some days, he can barely breathe.

But he is beginning to think he might not need to miss it so much, anymore.


	14. Road trip

 

He isn’t sure which is stranger--waking up in his human skin, or waking up with Stiles pressed warm and sleepy against him. He’s hard, and he shifts away, a little, a movement that draws his uncle’s eyes. The grey wolf thumps Derek’s leg once with his tail before he stands, shaking out his coat and trotting out of the den.

He looks down at Stiles, and feels a smile, soft and warm, twist up the edges of his lips.

“Is it time?” the boy asks, raspy, eyes still closed, and Derek nods.

It’s time.

~*~

They walk, Peter leading the way with happy yips and a briskly wagging tail, with Stiles between them and Derek following with everything they had packed. Stiles has one pack of dried meats and fresh nuts and berries, and the third time he offers to take it, Stiles snaps at him, so sharp and vicious, Derek whines and ducks his head, forgetting for a moment that he is the damn alpha.

Stiles, he thinks, not for the first time, is not good for his mental well being.

The Jeep Peter secured for them is a big boxy thing, bright blue paint peeling and rusty and Stiles makes a pleased noise in his throat, and he jogs ahead of Derek, almost crowing in delight as he peers inside.

“Stiles,” Derek barks, exasperated as he follows.

“Dude, look at it. It’s perfect!”

“It’s a death trap,” Derek says flatly, opening the back.

“Awww, don’t listen to him, buddy, you’re gorgeous.”

Derek pauses and looks at Stiles, who's petting the Jeep and grinning so wide it made something in his chest twist. Stiles should always be this happy. He wants Stiles to always be this happy.

“Can I drive?” Stiles demands, grinning at him.

“Definitely not,” Derek says, decisively, and shuts the back of the Jeep, snagging the keys from his pocket and letting Peter jump into the back.

“Rude,” Stiles mumbles under his breath, but he’s grinning still, when he climbs into the passenger seat. Derek spares a last look at the forest behind them before he turns the Jeep on and pulls onto the lonely, empty road.

Stiles chatters about nothing, and peers at the map, and hums quiet and tuneless as Derek drives, until the sun soaking in through the window coaxes him into sleep and he curls against the center console, as close to Derek as he can be while they drive.

It's strange. Being human again, is strange. Being here instead of in the forest, surrounded by the trees and the scent of the world. It claws like an itch he can't reach, just under the surface of his skin and he shifts in his seat as he drives.

It used to be a drive like this, from the mountains of Washington to the coast of southern Oregon , could take a few hours, a day at most. But that was in a world where gas was one five minute stop in small towns, where the roads were clear and easy to travel and the Dead didn't try to eat the living.

The world was different now, and maybe that was what was so strange about this odd road trip. Not just being in his human skin and reaching for Stiles. But pretending that the world wasn't completely different from what he had known.

He drives for three hours before Stiles wakes, his voice scratchy. “Where are we?”

“Near Roseburg,” he answers. “We need to stop for gas soon.”

Stiles hums an answer and sits up in the seat, peering out at the road. They’re on a clear stretch, and Derek steers around the few cars on the side of the road without much effort.

“Making good time,” he hums and Derek nods. It could be much worse.

“We have enough gas to get us to the coast, if we stick to the map,” Peter says, abruptly and Stiles glance back at him.

“Jesus, Peter, put some fucking clothes on,” he orders, and Derek tosses the boy a curious look.

Humans were so strange about nudity. Peter laughs, softly but does as he’s ordered, squirming into a pair of jeans before collapsing back into the seat. “We _have_ enough gas. But it wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world to stop and see what we can find. Maybe when we stop for the night.”

“Why are we stopping for the night?” Stiles demands, flailing a little and Derek catches his hand before he gets slapped in the face.

“Because traveling in the dark is asking to be killed,” Peter says, patiently. “And pack or no, I am not going to be killed because you are desperate to reach this girl.”

Stiles frowns, and Derek squeezes the hand he realizes he’s still holding. “Stiles. We’re going to get her. We are. But we have to keep you alive. I’m going to do everything I can to find and rescue this girl. But I’m not going to put you at risk, not even for Lydia. I need you to trust me to do both.”

Stiles is still, something so strange that it startles Derek, and his head bobs nervously as he licks his lips.

“Can you trust me?” Derek asks and Stiles nods, just once.

It’s enough for now.

~*~

He’s tense and nervous as they settle into an empty barn before sunset. The whole thing is tinted yellow by the rapidly falling sun, and Peter murmured that he would keep watch before slipping away. Derek herds Stiles up to the hay loft and settles them both with food, before he curls up in one of the sleeping bags and watches Stiles.

It takes almost an hour for his nervous energy to burn off, for him to stop pacing and tapping, before he quits climbing down the ladder and poking around the barn before scrambling back up to where Derek is waiting. After the third time, sleepy and grumpy, Derek snaps at him, “What is your problem?”

Stiles jumps and gives Derek a guilty look. “I. Um. I just don’t like it here? It’s so open and exposed. And it smells funny? I’m--sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll sit down. Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep, your heartbeat is going fucking crazy,” Derek grumbles. He doesn’t add that he feels empty and exposed without Stiles pressed against him, his arms almost aching for the other man.

“I know we had to leave. I mean, it was my idea and we couldn’t stay there forever, not with winter coming. But I miss it.”

“Our den?” Derek asks, quietly and Stiles nods, ducking his head shyly. “I miss it too,” he confesses, and Stiles looks up at him, his eyes wide.

“Do you think--” he cuts the question off before he can finish it, even though Derek knows how it goes. He knows why Stiles broke it off, swallowed it down and pushed into his blankets. “Nevermind.”

He settles in the hay and his blankets and even though they’re sharing a tiny loft, it feels like Stiles is miles away. Derek is used to him so close they’re sharing breath, feeling the comfortable pressure of Stiles at his side and against his chest, the boy’s arms twisted around him.

He bites back the whine building in his throat, desperate for that, as Stiles gets comfortable far away from him.

Just because he wants something doesn’t mean Stiles is willing to give it, or even _wants_ to.

So he swallows all his _want_ and closes his eyes.

“My dad--we used to stay in places like this.” Stiles confesses. Derek makes a low hum of acknowledgement, quietly nudging him to keep talking, holding his breath as the boy does. “We found a deserted farm, about a year after we left Beacon Hills. I think by then we were in Montana, headed that way because of the snow, you know how the Dead didn’t like it. And we heard it was clear of the militias. It was a good place. I don’t think the people had been gone long, because some of the livestock was still alive, you know? And Mama McCall kept them alive. Dad and some of the deputies who followed us planted in the spring and we ate like pigs all summer. I even learned how to can, so we could put up some for the winter.” There’s a smile in his voice that makes Derek ache to hold him. He twists to look at Stiles and finds him staring dreamily at the roof of the barn.

“It wasn't bad," Stiles confesses. "I know it is, now, but it wasn't always. I liked the farm, liked that Scott and his mom were close to us and that Dad was there--my mom died, before everything. She had dementia, and after she died, I was always worried about my dad. About Scott and his mom. I was afraid I'd lose them too, and I did whatever I could to keep them safe. I used to drive my dad fucking crazy with my demands, but he always put up with me. I think he got that we took care of each other, that I needed that after Mom."

"Pack cares for each other," Derek says, quietly, and Stiles huffs a little.

"Yeah, I guess that's what we were," he murmurs.

"You miss them," Derek says, and the scent of grief and guilt is so sudden and strong it almost makes Derek choke.

Stiles' voice is light and even, though, when he says, "Yeah. I do. Does that bother you? Because you're my new pack?"

Derek shakes his head, the familiar ache of his sister and family echoing in his chest and from outside, Peter howls, low and mournful.

"No, Stiles. I would never expect to take their place."

Stiles nods, and curls on his side. He's quiet and Derek only knows he's awake by the quick beat of his heart.

But through the darkness, he murmurs, "Goodnight, Derek," and Derek falls asleep with the boy's voice in his ears.

 


	15. Danger on the road

 

He’s woken up next to Stiles for months. But this is the first time that he’s woken up next to Stiles in a beam of sunlight, curled toward Derek with his face soft and bathed in a golden light and felt the urge to draw the boy awake with kisses.

Derek blinks and stares at him.

Stiles is pack, and he adores the talkative flighty boy with his clever hands and sly smile, but he--he has never wanted to kiss his packmates before.

He cocks his head and frowns harder at the boy, like he is some elaborate puzzle to put together and Stiles huffs in sleepily. “Stop glaring, didn’t do anyth’ng.”

Absurd beautiful boy. Stiles blinks, sleepily and Derek says, awkward, “We should get up. Peter wanted to be on the road at first light.”

Stiles nods, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. “Kay,” he agrees and Derek stands, scrambling for the ladder in the hopes it’ll help him keep his sanity.

He very firmly ignores his uncle’s sharp knowing eyes and wide grin.

Damn wolf is too clever for his own good.

~*~

Travel changed, after the Dead rose.

People  _ stopped  _ traveling. Life became about survival instead of living and maybe they lost something with that, but it was better to stay where you were, with supplies you hoarded, then to chance your odds against the Packs and Militia and the Dead on the road.

So he isn’t terribly surprised that they don’t pass anyone on the roads, the they drive through a country that  _ feels _ dead.

Until--

“Fuck, Derek,” Stiles breathes, and he slows the Jeep.

They haven’t been noticed yet, and he thinks, hysterically, that this is the other reason people are smart enough to not travel.

Because most people are smart enough to hole up in places that the Dead avoid.

At the very least, they settle behind enough fortifications that the Dead have to really work for it, to get to them.

But on the road.

Like this. There is nothing between them and the horde of Dead but a thin sheet of metal and shatter proof glass.

His hands are sweaty on the wheel and he isn’t sure if it’s because there are more than enough zombies to tear him apart, or because of Stiles, sitting quietly at his side, eyeing the Dead like they’re a personal affront to him by standing in the road.

“We can go around them,” Peter says. “There’s a series of back roads, we can get around them.”

“How long will it take?” Stiles demands and Peter sighs.

“We’ll lose a day,” he concedes and Stiles is immediately scowling.

“Dude, no. We can take this--it’s what, twenty? We can kill twenty fucking Dead, we aren’t losing a  _ day _ over twenty fucking zombies.”

“That,” Peter says silkily, “is very easy when you are not the one who will be fighting the twenty fucking zombies.”

Stiles stares at him, his eyes wide and startled, and then he grins, and Derek’s never seen that look on his face, not ever.

It almost scares the wolf.

Stiles shoves the door open with a loud screech and jumps out of the Jeep, rolling as the Dead turn almost as one and Derek swears his heart actually stops, because he comes up grinning that wild manic grin and his eyes are shining and he’s got two goddamn knives in his hands and a horde of  _ twenty fucking zombies  _ are headed straight for him.

“Fuck,” Peter spits and then he’s jumping out after the boy, shifting mid-leap and Derek slams the Jeep in park and throws himself in front of Stiles a few seconds before the first Dead reach him and  _ roars. _

The fight is nothing different, it’s the same kind of fight he’s been having for the past four years, since they fled Beacon Hills in the night--since before that, truly. But it feels different, as he and Peter square off and face the horde, Stiles behind them.

But it  _ feels  _ different and that boy, with his intoxicating scent and rabbit fast heartbeat and quickfire smile, is why.

He’s shaking as he throws himself into the fight, ripping through two zombies before the third tears at his arm, and it’s because there’s suddenly consequences. There is Stiles, in all his human frailty and it’s fucking  _ terrifying _ .

Peter keeps easy pace with him, a few steps behind to catch the Dead that get past Derek, guarding Stiles and Derek’s back. There is one moment, when he yelps and Derek whips around, tearing away the Dead digging into his uncle’s flank away and twisting its head off with a savage flick of his wrist.

Then the world  _ explodes _ and Derek flinches, throwing a hand up as the bits of fire and earth and Dead come raining down.

A fucking  _ firebomb _ just went off in the damn road, and saved all their asses, and he--

“Road’s clear,” Stiles snaps, tugging on Peter’s ruff, dragging the limping wolf toward the Jeep, “move your ass, Derek!”

That.

That fucking bomb was Stiles.

What the holy hell is he keeping in that damn bag of his?

Derek shoves that question aside for later and takes the wheel as Stiles crawls into the back with Peter, cursing and muttering as he digs in his bag and matching the injured wolf for every snarl and snap as he cleaned the wound.

Derek didn’t bother to tell him that the wound would heal clean even without his help--the boy knew and he’d just watched him bomb the goddamn road. He felt like there was a lot of self preservation in letting Stiles do what he wanted when it came to Peter’s care.

“You are both fucking idiots,” Stiles snaps when he’s finally satisfied with Peter’s condition. He crawls into the front seat and runs a critical eye over Derek.

“‘m fine,” Derek grunts and Stiles hisses wordlessly.

“I’ll decide that.”

Derek reaches for his hand, not entirely sure that Stiles will allow the touch, but he does, and he can feel the boy trembling in the aftermath of the fight. He feels a rush of affection for the boy, and squeezes his hand, a wordless thanks that Stiles acknowledges by rubbing his thumb over Derek’s wrist.

“Next time I get out, stay behind.” he mutters.

“Next time,” Peter says from the back seat, “you decide to carry a firebomb in your bag, let us know.”

“I have six more,” Stiles says absently, and if it bothers him, the shocked stare from Derek and Peter he doesn’t say.

He doesn’t even acknowledge it.

“You know we’ll have them following us, right? The bomb and that roar you gave--it wasn’t like we were quiet,” Stiles says, looking at him finally, and Derek can almost see his mind twisting, searching for a way through this new threat.

His boy is bright and fierce and Derek wants to howl with pride. He bites the inside of his cheek and nods. “We should find a den to hole up until they pass,” he says and flicks a look at Peter.

Getting lucky with one smallish horde was one thing. But running headlong into another, with Stiles--that is something completely different and made his wolf panic and whine.

“Drive,” Peter says, evenly. “We’ll find a place along the road.”

~*~

Stiles is asleep when they find it, a tall narrow farmhouse and stilo. It reminds him of the farm they left that morning, and he feels a pang.

He hopes that whatever happens in this little farm, it won’t ruin the memories Stiles has of other farms.

They sit for a moment, staring up at it in the waning sunlight and he thinks, if this was a different world, if he had met Stiles under different circumstances, maybe he would have carried him into a place like this. With blue shutters and a wrap around porch and a messy, overgrown garden that Stiles would want to plant and Derek would work in while Stiles bossed him around from the porch.

In a different world, they could have a tire swing and a dog on the big lawn and family to fill the halls, a whole pack to make the place smell like home and  _ theirs _ .

He swallows hard and blinks the thought away because they don't live in a different world, and in this one, a picturesque farmhouse meant for a big family is only a place to hide for the night, not an invitation for forever.

A forever Stiles doesn't even  _ want _ .

He slips out of the Jeep and carefully pulls Stiles from the backseat and Peter leads the way up the steps, opening the door and sniffing for the Dead. It's still and quiet, though, and they get the sleeping boy settled without ever waking him, and he lingers there, for a moment, brushing the hair out of Stiles face and wishing like hell they weren't fighting for their lives. That they had found each other in a different world.

Laura would have loved his boy.

"Derek," Peter calls from the door and he huffs a sigh, brushes his fingers down Stiles cheek once more to scent mark him, and then retreats to the hall.

"We can't stay here for long, you know that."

"We're far enough that we shouldn't run into a horde."

"Derek," Peter says, patronizing and tired and sad.

He knows. He does. The roar on the road had been too much, louder than he planned, maybe then he'd ever roared. It startled him as much as it had Peter.

But. "Stiles was in danger," he whispers and Peter nods.

"I know, nephew. But now, we have to keep him safe. I need you to trust me to keep him safe."

It makes something in his chest tight and achy but he nods, and Peter touches his shoulder, gentle before he steps away.

Derek stays for a moment, longer, watching Stiles sleep before he kicks his ass in gear.

~*~

It takes an hour, all told, to patrol the immediate surrounding area, to clear out the house and bring their shit in from the Jeep. Every trip, Derek darts upstairs, peeking at Stiles who doesn't move once. He's snoring, a soft little thing that Derek refuses to find adorable by the time the sun sets and Peter returns, circling the house and yipping to let Derek know he's near.

_ Stay close to him. There's movement. I'll keep watch _ , Peter sends along the pack bond and Derek sends a wordless affirmation as he settles next to Stiles.

Which is when he feels it, the sticky warm wet on the boy’s side, the hot press of his skin and the world drops out from under him.


	16. Breaking point

“ _ Peter _ !”

It isn’t quite a roar, but it’s close enough that he knows Peter will be pissed and he can feel, distantly, the annoyance and worry as his uncle turns back to the house.

"'erek?" Stiles slurs and Derek makes a low noise.

"C'mon, gotta wake up for me, Stiles," he says, gently, coaxing the boy to sit up and tugging the plethora of shirts off of him--seriously, why does he wear so many damn layers?

Peter skids into the room as Derek makes a noise that can only be called a broken sob, and he hears his uncle's heartbeat trip as he catches the scent of blood. He’s bleeding sluggishly, a piece of shrapnel protruding dully from his side.

"Is he--Derek, is it--"

"Not a bite," Derek says, shortly, so dizzy with relief he can barely force the word out. Stiles blinks at him, stupid with sleep and Derek wants to shake him for the terrifying few minutes, and wants to drag him close and keep him safe forever.

"You ok, big guy?" he asks, his voice scratchy.

"You're an idiot," Derek says, and yanks  _ sharp _ on the offending shrapnel. Stiles makes a choked noise and Peter catches his wrist, black veins leeching up his arm as he drains the pain.

"Not nice," Stiles whines and Peter huffs a laugh, handing Derek the pack that smells medicinal. He nods his thanks and paws through it until he finds the antibiotics and some alcohol and bandages.

"How bad is it?" Peter asks and Derek shakes his head.

It was small and sharp. Not so bad that he'll need stitches, but bad enough that it’ll leave a scar on Stiles' ribs, a twisted curving reminder of the fight.

Even that's ok. Derek figures everyone in this world has scars unless you're a werewolf, and even they have some, now.

But the fact that Stiles was  _ hurt _ , was bleeding and hurt and could get an infection--it makes panic and terror claw at his throat.

He'd forgotten. Stiles was so steady and bright and  _ strong _ , he forgot that humans are weak and breakable and that he was fragile where Peter and Derek were strong and it  _ terrified _ him, that he'd forgotten that.

Terrified him because he'd forgotten and Stiles got hurt and what if it happened again? What if next time, Stiles got bitten? Or died?

He whines, and feels a brush of warm fingers against his cheek.

"I'm ok," Stiles says, steady and soothing and Derek whimpers a little. He focuses on dumping alcohol on the wound, and Stiles gives a gratifying yelp of pain. Derek hums a little.

"Next time stay in the damn Jeep," Derek says, and Stiles laughs, wheezy and pained, but still bright, and maybe it's ok. Peter slips away, murmuring about checking the house but Derek barely registers it as he stares at Stiles, his eyes bright and steady.

Maybe he's ok, even human and breakable.

Derek's hands shake as pads the wound with gauze and tapes it down, rubbing his hand over it when it’s safely tucked away by startlingly white bandages.

Stiles catches his hand, and squeezes it. He's panting a little, his face tight and shiny and Derek murmurs, "You're hurting," and doesn't wait for him to respond before he's cupping a hand around his neck and drawing the pain out.

It cascades into him in a rush of sensation that he barely feels because Stiles makes this noise, a delicious moan of relief and pleasure and Derek groans at that, lowering his head until their foreheads are touching.

"Thanks," Stiles whispers into the space between them and Derek nods, a tiny move that bumps their noses together. He should pull away.

Find out what that scream for Peter brought down on them.

But Stiles is shaking, still, and in his arms and he smells so fucking good, even with the scent of medicine and blood on him and Derek doesn't want to move away from this tiny space that feels like home.

"Stiles," he says, not really sure where he's going with that, just helpless to keep it in, and Stiles makes a soft noise of reassurance and then.

Oh.

_ Oh _ .

He whines and Stiles smiles against his lips because that's a thing, that's a thing they're doing and Stiles started it.

Stiles wants this.

Stiles wants  _ him _ .

He groans and opens his mouth, and takes the kiss from sweet and chaste to wet and dirty and Stiles moans, shifting a little to get closer to him.

Derek clamps a hand down on his hip, pinning him in place and Stiles rips away from his mouth with a groan, drawing a petulant whine from Derek before he ducks down to lick and nip at the sweet pale skin of his throat.

Oh god, the smell here, it's so fucking  _ good _ .

"Really shouldn't be so turned on by you pinning me down, big guy," Stiles hums and Derek huffs against his throat and feels a futile twitch of his body that he holds still and a wave of arousal so strong it makes his teeth itch to drop.

"Yeah, but it's totally fucking hot, Jesus,  _ Derek _ ," Stiles whines, catching a handful of hair and pulling him up into a bruising kiss as Derek holds him still and rubs his hard cock against Stiles' thigh.

The tiny noises of pleasure that Stiles keeps feeding him are going to make him come, he just  _ knows _ it.

“Derek,” Stiles says and Derek reaches for his pants.

“Stay still,” he snarls when Stiles tries to move, and the boy does an admirable impression of boneless fish, enough that Derek huffs his approval and kisses him again, quick and hard.

Then he slipped a hand into his boy’s pants and Stiles bit down on his neck, muffling his needy moan there as Derek wraps a hand around his dick, stroking him quick and hard. He whines and tilts his head, giving Stiles more access as he rubs a thumb over the slit of his cock and Stiles chokes out his name before he shudders, pressing against the hand on his belly holding him still, and his cock pulses in Derek’s hand, coming in hot waves over his fist.

It happens almost embarrassingly fast, and Derek huffs a pleased noise as Stiles drags his head down and presses frantic kisses to his lips.

Derek lets Stiles feed at his mouth as  he fumbles with his pants, and then Derek’s got his cock in his hand and it feels so good, jacking himself off with Stiles come still wet on his hand, that he whines and Stiles is whispering in his ear, “Oh my god, Derek, that’s so--oh jesus, you’re so hot, baby, come on, come for me, need to see it” and he does, comes with a groan he feels in his toes, his vision going white for a hot endless second, as he comes in a rush over Stiles belly.

After, while Stiles is panting and Derek is sleepy and loose limbed, he curls low on Stiles belly, where he’s rubbed his spunk into his boy’s skin and inhales the scent of them, mixed together and licks at Stiles’ belly with a pleased little rumble.

He can feel the amused smiles his boy is giving him and he almost feels embarrassed by his actions, but Stiles’ fingers are soft and steady on his neck, holding him close as Derek nuzzles his skin and he feels safe and warm and  _ home _ and he basks in that.


	17. Hidden

“What was that?” Stiles asks, quietly and Derek presses his lips into Stiles’ skin. “Derek,” Stiles prompts, when the silence drags too long for his taste and Derek huffs.

“You’re pack,” Derek says, slow and hesitant. “And. I trust you. You—you aren’t family, but you’re  _ pack.” _

Stiles scratches his hands through Derek’s hair and says, “Would you do this with anyone who was pack?”

Derek’s head snaps up, his eyes wide and hurt. “ _ No! _ You’re—you. Stiles,  _ no!” _

“So I’m special?” he asks, and Derek surges up, presses a kiss into his mouth, wet and hungry, and breathes him in.

“Yes,” he says, “You’re  _ mine.” _

Stiles smiles at him, then, bright and happy in a way he doesn’t see often from the boy and Derek wants to preen because he did that. He made Stiles that happy.

“Derek!” Peter shouts and it jerks them both upright as the older man pounds up the stairs and almost falls into the room with them. If he’s startled by the scent of sex in the air or the general state of undress he finds them in, he doesn’t even blink.

“Get up,” he snaps, brushing past them to peer out the window. Derek kisses Stiles once more, a quick promise, before he rolls to his feet and pads over to stand next to Peter, tucking himself away as he did.

The sight stops him cold. “Shit,” he murmurs and Peter nods.

“You need to learn to control your damn voice, nephew,” Peter says, a little bit biting and Derek snarls at him. From the road, a low long moan answers him and Peter gives him a supremely unimpressed glare.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve secured the house,” Peter says. “The fence will keep them out for a while.”

“And then what?” Derek demands, watching them as terror claws at his throat. Because the horde out there, it’s not ten Dead, it’s not even twenty. He can’t count them, they’re so close and so many.

The bite can’t kill a werewolf, but a horde that size could tear them to pieces, and if he’s dead, then who will protect Stiles? He whines in his throat, and Stiles peers over his shoulder, the long warm line of him pressed against Derek for a heartbeat and he wants to revel in that, wants to draw the boy closer.

This beautiful brilliant boy who devastates him with his smile and who he  _ needs _ to keep safe, and who he  _ can’t _ .

He can’t keep him safe, led them into this damn house and got them trapped.

“Hey, c’mon, sweetwolf. C’mon. Don’t do that,” a low warm voice says, a soft croon and Derek blinks at him.

There’s blood dripping from his hands and Stiles is holding them, as his claw flex and dig into his palms, and he looks worried.

“Stiles?” Derek whispers, “Peter, we—get him out of here.”

“Dude,” Stiles says, a tiny bit of outrage in his voice. “Where the hell do you think you’re gonna send me? I’m not  _ leaving _ you.”

“This isn’t safe,” Derek snaps, throwing a bloody hand at the window and Stiles laughs.

“The whole fucking  _ world _ isn’t safe,” Derek,” he snarls back. “What the hell do you think sending me away will do, except leave me exposed and alone?”

“We can’t,” Peter says, and Derek twists, glaring at his uncle.

“No, Derek, even if I wanted to and I  _ do _ want to keep Mischief safe—I  _ can’t _ . The horde is too close and they’ve flanked every direction except the treeline. And I don’t trust him to stay safe in the trees at night, do you?”

The thought makes his fangs itch to drop, to shove Stiles behind him and protect him and from the glare he’s getting from his boy—Stiles  _ knows  _ it.

“We’re safe, nephew. They can’t get in and if they do, we’ll hear them. So we stay still and we stay hidden, just like—“ He bites off his words but Derek knows and his eyes close, before he nods, once, and turns away.

“I’ll take the first watch,” he mumbles and Peter shakes his head.

“Stay with Mischief. I’ll keep watch through the night.”

Derek doesn’t argue. There is too much yanking at him, ordering him to stay, to argue.

Instead he draws Stiles back to the nest of bedding that smells like them, presses him into the wall, and curls protective behind him, his body a shield between the fragile human and the dangers of the night.

“Derek?”

“Go to sleep, Stiles.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, “When did you  hide?”

Humans. They’re fragile. Breakable. So easily torn away by the disease that destroyed the whole goddamn world.

“I met a girl,” he murmurs, and Stiles shifts, squirming in his arms until he’s peering up at Derek. “I…she was special. She was the first person who wasn’t pack that I wanted to be with.”

“You loved her,” Stiles says, and his voice is gentle, warm. Derek flinches a little, but there’s only soft understanding in the boy.

In  _ his _ boy.

“She died,” Derek says, quietly. “I wanted her to be pack, and I didn’t—we didn’t have human pack members. Peter brought a alpha to me, he said he could change her, that it would make her stronger and she could be pack, could be  _ mine _ .”

He remembers, the hope that burned in his gut and the smile Paige had given him that afternoon in the school, when she came out of the music room and he was leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

He remembered the way it broke into confusion and terror when the alpha emerged from the shadows, the way she had run from him and the terrible red glow of his eyes.

He remembered the way she screamed.

“I. After she died,” he says, halting, “I ran. I hid from my pack and the hunters, for days. It’s what we’re taught. When there’s danger, we hide, stay quiet and small and still, until the danger is passed. That’s how the lone wolf survives.”

Stiles stares at him, and his face is soft with understanding that Derek knows damn well he doesn’t deserve.

“You aren’t alone anymore, Derek. Neither of us is alone anymore.”

~.~

He wakes up to his uncle’s hand on his shoulder and the clamor of hands banging against the house, and for a heartstopping moment, he can’t hear anything over that and the relentless hungry moans, can’t hear Stiles over it and he shudders, reaching for the boy.

Stiles makes a sleepy sigh and shifts, closer to Derek and he feels his heartbeat settle back to where it belongs.

“They got through the fences,” Peter murmurs, and Derek gives him a flat glare, because if his uncle is going to wake him with news of impending death, he can at least lead with something Derek hasn’t fucking figured out on his own.

“How bad is it?” he whispers, shifting Stiles away.

The boy grumbles in his sleep and curls into Derek’s pillow as he rises, and Derek swallows his laugh because it isn’t  _ funny _ that the boy has no fucking self-preservation skills, it really isn’t.

Except that Stiles huffs his name and rolls into the warm place he leaves behind and that--that  _ is  _ fucking adorable.

“Derek,” Peter says, patiently, “I understand you are currently besotted but if you could do me the favor of paying attention, we are about to  _ die.” _

“Will the walls hold?”

Peter nods and Derek actually looks at him, taking in the pale skin, the tired set to his shoulders and tension around his eyes. “I think so,” he says.

“Sleep,” Derek orders, and Peter gives him a disbelieving stare and Derek grins. “I’ll draw them away.”

“Derek,” Peter starts and Derek flashes his eyes, a small growl edging up his throat.

“Keep Stiles safe,” he says and then he’s slipping away. The house hasn’t been completely surrounded yet, but it’s a near thing, and he can  _ feel _ the Dead closing in on him as drops to the ground from a second story window. He throws his head back and  _ howls _ , loud enough that it almost covers Stiles’ panicked voice shouting his name.

It does the trick, and he spins, racing into the field of dying corn as the Dead shamble after him.

The thing is--he knows this is dangerous. That drawing the Dead to him is a horrible plan. There’s nothing he can do against a horde the size of this one, and it sparks along his skin, a low grade thrum of terror--he remembers Laura’s body, ripped apart so savagely.

He kicks on another burst of speed, staying just close enough to the horde that they would stay focused on him, as he leads them away from the farmhouse, away from his  _ pack _ .

He’s almost a mile from the farmhouse and the Dead are growing in number behind him when he hears the screech of tires.

“ _ Duck,”  _ a shrill voice screams and it’s so familiar, that feminine note of command that he doesn’t even argue, doesn’t consider not obeying, drops in a roll as something whistles over his head. There’s a crack of glass breaking and a low  _ whoosh _ before heat blossoms at his back. Three more projectiles get flung over his head and then three werewolves dart past him, a dark haired boy leading the way with a savage smile.

A blonde man catches Derek’s arm and drags him toward a truck, where a small girl is watching the battle with sharp eyes.

“What the fuck were you thinking, howling like that?” he snarls and Derek catches the scent of werewolf and something else, something cold and  _ wrong _ about him. He can feel his hackle rising, but he bites down on that.

“Saving my damn pack,” Derek snarls and the girl glances at him, blandly dismissive before her gaze darts back to the fight. Derek turns to watch, surprised by the way the three werewolves are ripping through the Dead. The dark haired one is laughing, something bright and manic in his eyes as he ripped a Dead’s throat out, snapping it’s spinal cord.

“He’s playing,” the girl grumbles and she reaches down, stepping into the blonde’s arms as he lowers her to the ground. She kisses his cheek absently and then gave Derek a critical stare. “Where are they?”

“Who?” Derek asks, his heart sinking and the girl gives him an almost sympathetic look.

Behind him, the werewolves are laughing and the blonde sighs, regretful. “You’re pack, alpha. Where is your pack?”


	18. His girl

 

Derek is standing in the yard, his shoulders stiff and his eyes furious. There are three trucks behind him and a pack of ‘wolves leaning out of them and Peter bites back a vicious curse.

“Peter,” Stiles whines, and he huffs, pushing the boy back a step. Derek will eviscerate him if anything hurts their Mischief, and there is a part of Peter that screams to protect him, to defend the weakest member of their tiny pack.

And there is something about the dark haired smiling boy at Derek’s side that Peter doesn’t trust. Derek is a distrustful bastard, and the glower on his face speaks volumes, but Peter hasn’t trusted anyone, not even his pack, since before the fire, since the year he lost to his Alpha’s manipulation of his memories.

And there is something about the boy that smells... _ wrong. _

“I don’t see a pack,” the stranger says, casually and Stiles snarls quietly, a fledgling fury that makes a smile tug at Peter’s lips.

“Hush, Mischief,” he murmurs.

“Look, we gotta move, Theo,” another voice shouts, and Stiles freezes.

Peter looks at him, at this boy who has so completely changed their lives and he wonders how this will. Because he can feel it, a fault line shift, and he sighs a little. Tugs on the pack bond that is weaker, in this skin, but still present.

“I’m shifting,” he murmurs. “Do  _ try _ not to get yourself killed.”

Stiles barely waits until he’s settled in his wolfskin before he’s bolting, rattling down the stairs with Peter at his heels, and exploding onto the porch.

Peter shoves the boy back a step, snarling at the other pack as he braces himself between Stiles and them, as Derek steps between them, a wall of muscle and scowling eyebrows.

And Stiles ruins it, poking at Peter’s shoulder and wiggling past Derek. His nephew catches the boy by the waist with a long sigh.

“Jackson?” Stiles demands, and the blonde makes a face.

“How are you still  _ alive?” _ he demands, grumpily and Derek growls.

“Could ask you the same, dude,” Stiles snarks back and he shifts, a little, something sweet and faint clinging to his scent. “Is--is Lydia--”

“Hello, Stiles,” a cool feminine voice says and Peter’s gaze swings to her, and he whines, low and helpless. He barely hears Stiles whispering her name, or the plaintive little noises the boy makes when Derek holds him in place when Stiles tries to bolt forward.

The girl comes forward, and she gives him a faint smile.

_ Lydia. This is his Lydia, _ Peter thinks.

He can’t want her, can’t indulge in the burning curiosity to take her apart to see what makes that cool smile curve, can’t dig to see what hides behind those flat green eyes.

It is harder, so much harder than it should be, to drag his gaze away. And he sees Theo, smiling manic and pleased. There is something unnerving about it, about the possessive curl of the coyote’s lips, and he shivers, shifting to press against Derek’s leg as he sees it.

 


	19. What happened

It feels surreal, staring at Lydia from behind Derek's protective form, seeing the tiny smile on her lips like it's been days instead of years.

He makes a noise, broken and hopeful as he pushes at Derek. Lydia gives Derek an impatient glower, and the wolf shifts aside, slowly, slowly, just enough that Stiles can dart forward and jerk Lydia into his arms.

Jackson snarls softly, distinctly familiar, and isn't  _ that _ interesting, but it fades under the comfortable weight of her in his arms, the way she still fits against him, tucked tight and tiny under his chin, the way her hair smells of dust and smoke and something floral. He rubs his eyes into her hair as she clings to him, and even though her voice is frosty as she mumbles meaningless comfort, he can feel the tight grip she's got in his shirt, the way she trembles, just a little.

The way this is terrifying and wonderful to her, too.

When he insisted they leave the den and go in search of Lydia, he had hoped, but it was a quiet, broken sort of hope, the kind he knew nothing would come of.

But she's here. She's  _ here _ , in his arms, alive and giving him a wobbly smile.

"Oh my god, Lydia," he whispers and she pulls away, grins at him, suddenly.

"Surprised?"

"You have no fucking clue."

Jackson snorts and then, "Dude, you gotta let her go. We took down your Dead, but it's not like we were quiet. You gotta get clear of this farm house."

"And we," the stranger, a dark haired smiling young man says, and Lydia stiffens in his arms, "need to get back to Dredd. Lydia."

"I'm not leaving them behind," she says, simply and Derek inhales, a protest forming even before her people can speak.

"Stiles," he starts.

"Can come with us," the dark haired stranger says. He smiles. "They all can. Of course, Lydia's friends are our friends."

Derek is stiff and startled and Stiles reluctantly releases Lydia to slide into the Alpha's space. Peter presses against their legs, against Stiles, who glances up at Derek, silent but pleading.

He sighs. "This is reckless," he murmurs.

"We don't have to go with them," Stiles answers. He doesn't bother to pitch his voice low, knows that with at least one werewolf and a werecoyote in the other party there isn't any use.

"You came all this way for her, and you'd be happy walking away?" Derek asks, arching an eyebrow in disbelief.

His heart squeezes painful but he tilts his head up, meets his Alpha's gaze with a steadiness that makes Derek blink.

"I wouldn't be happy, but I'd do it," he says, and Derek's lips slowly tip into a smile. He leans down and brushes a light kiss over Stiles lips, a thank you and a promise. Dimly, Stiles is aware of Lydia, of her gasp and Jackson's groan, but it doesn't really register.

Not until Derek pulls away and tucks Stiles closer against his side as he faces the other Alpha--that has to be what the other man is--and smiles, and this time it's real. "Thanks. We'd love to."

~.~

The alpha isn't an alpha.

Stiles can tell that it rubs Peter and Derek wrong, that these werewolves are all working together and following his orders without the bonds of pack, but Jackson shrugs and looks away. "It works," he says. "I didn't think it would, but we weren't really in a place to turn away help and Theo  _ did _ . So we stayed. We owe him, even if he isn't my alpha."

Derek makes a disgruntled noise behind the wheel, following Theo's caravan back toward the tiny coastal town they reside in.

"Have you been here since--" Stiles breaks off.

"Since?"

"Since you got your face eaten off, you ass," he snaps and Jackson snarls.

Peter reaches out, casually slapping him hard enough that the boy bounces into the door of the Jeep. "Mind your manners," he says, mildly, and Stiles hides his smirk.

"We've been here most of that time. Not quite all of it." Jackson says, grudgingly. "Spent about two months with the Alpha who bit me before Hunters put him down. Then wandered for a while and Lydia got sick--Theo turned up and offered her medicine and shelter and she was going to die if we didn't take it, so we did." He shrugs and looks away, at the truck where Lydia is riding with Theo. "We never left."

There's something in Jackson's voice that makes Stiles' skin crawl and he frowns at the boy, opening his mouth but Derek shakes his head, silencing him.

Whatever Jackson isn't saying, he decides, Lydia will tell him.

It takes four hours to get to the town, and Jackson bounds out of the Jeep before Derek parks it, snatching Lydia's door open and dragging her into his arms. Stiles watches and then nudges Derek, "Is that what I can expect, sweetwolf?"

Derek gives him a flat stare. "Do you ever expect me to let you wander away for that long?"

Stiles blinks at him, hoping the 'wolf is joking, but he sees nothing even remotely amused in his eyes.

"Oh," he says faintly.

The town is small.  Stiles thinks that it's the kind of town that before Erab, it would have been quaint, picturesque, a lovely place that barely registered as people drove through.

Now, though.

It's ugly, a mass of barbed wire and high fences, of concrete block walls and sheet metal overlaying, the tops of the wall bristling with humans patrolling with guns. Even after they pull through the gates, even after they've been searched and checked for infection, the defenses don't let up. The whole town is is series of defensive and offensive measures, circling in and doubling back, a warren of tunnels and roads until they reach a wide circle of buildings. Stiles peers at it curiously as Derek climbs out, Peter stretching leisurely before he follows

There are three buildings here, and Stiles glances at them as Theo ambles up to them.

"Welcome to Dredd," he grins. He points at the small white house. "Mine. The one next to it is Lydia's. No one is allowed there without her permission and a guard." Something glints in his eyes and Stiles feels unease stir in his gut. "And the last house is the for our shifters. You're welcome there," he adds the last as an afterthought.

"I'm staying with Stiles," Derek says, flatly, and Theo smiles, slow and easy.

"Shifters don't bunk with humans."

"These do," Lydia says, sharply, and Theo glances at her. There's a long silent moment, tension that Stiles doesn't understand before he laughs, and nods. He leaves without saying anything else, and Lydia huffs a sigh. "C'mon. Let's get you settled in."

~.~

It's odd, being around people again. He sleeps most of the first day away, wrapped up in Derek's arms and Peter hovering close. Derek snarls but lets a nurse into the house and she glances over his injuries with a quick practiced eye, before pressing a rattling bottle of antibiotics into his hand. "Take 'em. You'll be fine if they don't get infected."

It's a brusque command and the more he sees of Dredd the more he realizes that this whole city is made up of brusque commands.

It's strange, being around people again, and part of that comes from the sense of pack that clings to everything but isn't allowed to seep, and settle. There's a simmer of resentment in the people's gazes as they move through the town, a few days after arrival. They barely look at Derek, padding in his wolf form at Stiles side, but they glare openly at Stiles.

It's weird. The whole fucking town is weird, and it leaves his skin crawling, every damn time he leaves the house and wanders through the public.

The only time he doesn't feel like he's a smooshed bug on the bottom of someone's shoe is when he walks through town with Theo or with Lydia.

Theo is...

Theo is creepy as  _ fuck _ .

Stiles tries to tell Derek, but the wolf stares at him with bright eyes and a lolling tongue and absolutely no input. Peter has a pinched look about his eyes, but he doesn't actually contribute anything to the discussion,  but Theo is  _ creepy _ . There's something wrong with him just being there, swooping in at the perfect moment to save the day, to rescue them from themselves.

There's something disconcerting about the way that Theo watches him, that ever present smirk on his lips, his eyes hungry and watchful.

It reminds Stiles of the way Derek watched him, in the weeks before they finally kissed, before Derek allowed himself to take what Stiles wanted to give.

"It doesn't bother you?" Stiles asks. He's leaning against Derek in their bed, and Derek is sprawled, naked and miles of skin stretched out in front of him, and that's an interesting and distracting thought.

"What?"

"The way Theo watches me."

Derek tenses and Stiles sits up a little, a frown furrowing deep between his eyebrows. "Holy shit, it  _ does _ . You don't like it. Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"It doesn't matter. Theo can stare all he want, you don't want him," Derek says, and it would sound dismissive if there wasn't a question at the end of that, in the lilt of his voice. 

Stiles smiles softly and leans in, pressing a kiss, gentle and chaste, to Derek's lips and murmurs, "Creepy bastard doesn't stand a chance, babe. I'm all yours."

Derek makes a noise, needy and pleased, in his throat, and drags Stiles across the bed, until he's straddling Derek's lap and his kiss is wet and dirty and for a while, Stiles forgets all about Theo and his creepy preoccupation with Stiles.

~.~

Derek is meeting with Theo the afternoon Lydia arrives on his doorstep, a week after they arrive in Dredd. He grins at her, swinging the door wide to let her in. "No," she says, decisively. "Mine, I think."

Vaguely, Stiles knows that this isn't normal, that Lydia's space is sacrosanct, but he's been listening to Lydia since the afternoon his father brought her home, and he washed her mother's blood from under her nails.

He follows her across the grassy lawn that separates the three central houses, and up the stairs to her tiny blue house.

He doesn't know what he's expecting, but the quiet little living room painted a cheery yellow and covered in books and notes, isn't it. Lydia is quiet as she prepares tea and sits across from him, her cup cradled in her hands, a plate of stale cookies on the table between them and she gives him a tremulous smile.

"Ok," she says, simply. "Ask me."

Stiles carefully puts his cup down and says, gently. "What the hell happened, Lydia?"

A noise like a sob bubbles up and she tamps it down ruthlessly, and sighs.

"You remember Jackson got bit, and I was there, and a horde was closing in--that's why you and the camp ran."

Stiles flushes, and looks down. "We didn't want to," he mumbles.

"I don't blame you," she says, sharply, and Stiles glances up at her, his eyes a little wet. "Stiles, if you had stayed the entire camp would have been killed."

"We shouldn't have left you," he says, and she shrugs.

"I should have listened to the Sheriff. I didn't--I knew the consequences were mine, if anything went wrong."

His stomach roils, and he isn't sure if it's because he's sitting across from her after all this time, when he had convinced himself he'd never see her again, or if it's the casual mention of his father.

She doesn't ask about him, and he doesn't offer. In this world, with so much death, it's easier, sometimes.

Derek doesn't talk about his dead and sometimes Stiles thinks he's got the right of it--that not talking is easier.

Scott always told him talking about the people they lost helped keep them present, but Stiles didn't like talking about Lydia, didn't like talking about his mom. It felt too personal, too raw and real to share with the whole world, sometimes too  much to share with himself.

He hoarded those words up and buried them where he could keep them safe and precious and tucked his father in the same safe space.

It was easier and worse and in the end, didn't matter because no one got to judge that besides him.

“Jackson was dying,” Lydia says, softly. “And there were Dead all around us. We should have died. But--one bit me and I screamed, and…” she shakes her head. “It did something to them,” she whispers and Stiles frowns. Because he loves Lydia, has since the first time his father brought her home, tear stained and shaking. And he knows she's one of the smartest people he's ever met. But this doesn't make any sense.

“Lydia,” he starts and she shakes her head, cutting him off.

“I know what you're going to say. But I  _ know  _ what happened. I screamed and it didn't draw them to us. It's like--it repelled them. And the Alpha found us the next morning. He saved Jackson and we stayed with him for a while, but Matt was never going to be long term.” She gets quiet and then, carefully, “We ended up in Echian, this little militant camp. I was sick. I screamed constantly and they--they were using it,  _ me _ , as a weapon against the Dead. Theo heard about it and he showed up. He saved us--took us from there and gave me to his doctors, until I was better, and it was easy, to stay with him after that. He isn't an alpha but it’s not bad here. We’re safe and cared for. And that's that.”

Stiles blinks at her. “That's that? Lyds, you were missing for two  _ years. _ I show up and Jackson is a werewolf, you're being treated like your breakable, and there's a creepy not-alpha wandering the fucking town giving orders. Oh, and you think your screams stop the Dead.”

“I can't explain that,” she says, her expression tight. “But I'm here and so is Jackson. So  _ you _ explain that.”

And the thing is--he can't. There isn't a way to explain it.

“Why do they treat you like they do?” He asks and Lydia gives a fatalistic little shrug.

“I can stop the Dead with my  _ scream _ .” She says. “And there's always my skill with chemicals--Theo is a werecoyote with no alpha status trying to keep a pack and I help him do that.”

“And your happy here?” he asks and something flickers in Lydia’s eyes.

“Are any of us happy in this world?” She asks, her voice empty and echoing.

He thinks of the months he spent in the woods, Derek a familiar presences at his side, of the quiet contentment he feels when he wakes up in Derek's arms.

“I am,” he offers and her expression goes gentle, a softness that he doesn't remember seeing in her.

“He cares about you,” she says.

“I love him,” Stiles says, and she nods.

“It's good, that you found that. Him. The end of the world is easier if there is someone to go through it with you.”

“Like Jackson,” Stiles says and she grins, wicked and wide.

“You never liked him, but he does this delicious thing with his tongue.” Stiles yelps and for a while it's easy, just sitting on the couch near her and teasing and the rest of the world fades away.

It's only when the sun begins to set and Stiles shifts away from her does she touch his wrist, gently.

“Be careful, Stiles. Theo protects what he wants, but it's not always a safe thing,  to be wanted by him.”

Stiles stares at her and she gives him a tense little smile that doesn't reach her eyes. “Don't trust him. And if you can get out--Stiles, don't you dare hesitate. You take your pack and you  _ run.” _

Stiles stares at her, at the terrible conviction in her eyes, and he nods.

He can’t make himself do anything else.


	20. Protective and possessive

Derek makes a face against his neck and Stiles giggles at the drag of stubble over his skin. “What’s wrong?”

“You smell like her.”

Stiles goes still and he frowns up at the ceiling. Derek is a possessive bastard, something he hadn’t really understood when it was only him and Peter in the woods, but here--here it was unavoidable.

“Derek--”

“She smells funny,” Derek mumbles. “Everything here smells  _ wrong _ . Don’t like it.”

Oh.  _ Ohh _ .

“Do you think Theo is dangerous?” he asks and Derek snaps his head up, eyes bright and worried. “Nothing happened. Calm down, I’m fine. I’m just--Lydia said something and I can’t stop thinking about it. About not trusting Theo.”

“I don’t trust him,” Derek says bluntly. “But we needed his help and you--”

Stiles tugs on Derek’s hair until he peers up at Stiles, his eyebrows pulled down into a heavy frown. “And I what?”

“You’re happy here,” Derek mutters, reluctantly.

“I’m happy with you,” Stiles says, easily. Like it  _ is  _ that easy. Derek stares at him, his eyes wide and startled and Stiles huffs a sigh. “Dude. I’m not happy because I’m in Dredd with Lydia. I mean, yeah, I’m happy she’s alive, obviously  I wanted her to be. But I’m happy because of  _ you _ , Derek. Because we’re safe, and you’re with me.”

Derek groans then and stretches up, and Stiles catches him in a hungry kiss, his fingers digging in where they’re caught in his hair, and Derek whines into the kiss, licks into Stiles mouth. He catches the younger man’s lip and nips, just enough to make Stiles shiver and then yanks him down the bed, and settles over him, a blanket of heat and muscle and warm kisses that go from desperate and hard to lazy and wet, hands trailing heat and an unspoken promise as Derek strokes down the curve of Stiles’s chest, slipping a hand around his cock and eating up the startled noise Stiles makes.

“I’m happy with you, too,” he promises, and Stiles bites his lip as the werewolf slides down and takes his cock in the wet heat of his mouth, and then nothing makes a whole lot of sense, for a long time and when it does, Derek is pressed against him, a curl of warmth and safety and he doesn’t worry about it.

Theo and Dredd are still something they need to talk about, but it can be another day.

Not right now, not when they are both so painfully happy.

~.~

"Stiles? You get lost?"

Stiles startles as he turns, surprised to see Theo standing a few feet away.

Fucking shifters and their damnable ability to move silently.

He waves a vague hand at the pier. "No, I'm, uh. Waiting on Derek. He's meeting me here when he finishes his scouting rotation."

Theo nods, and leans against the rickety pier, his bright gaze fastened on Stiles. "Haven't seen much of you since you got to Dredd. Thought you were avoiding me."

Stiles shrugs, and smiles. "Derek and Peter take my health pretty seriously and I scared them, getting hurt. They've been a little suffocating because of it."

It's true, even if the whole truth is that Stiles *has been avoiding Theo.

"Werewolves get a little territorial over their mates," Theo nods and Stiles does  _ not _ react to that word, doesn't wonder if that's what this thing between him and Derek is building into.

"Your town it's a little--unusual," he says, understatement  of the damn year and Theo gives the little town a smile.

It's cold and lifeless and Stiles shivers a little.

"It is, but after Erab, I figured, what we were doing wasn't stopping the end of the world. Maybe it was time to try something new."

"And the Packs didn't care? That a Beta was collecting a pack?"

Theo flashes a smile, "Are you worried about me, Stiles?"

He shrugs. "I've got reason enough to care, so yeah. Maybe. I guess I am."

Theo laughs at that, his head tipped back and eyes closed. "Don't oversell it, Stilinski. Wouldn't want to get the wrong idea, after all."

Stiles is pretty sure  _ that _ is a lie, but he grins and shrugs and Theo smiles. "We hold our own, when the Packs come calling. I can keep you safe here," he says, like that was the underlying concern in Stiles question.

Like that is even Theo's job.

"Why--why do they follow you? You aren't an alpha. Shifters need that authority. It doesn't make any sense." Stiles blurts out and Theo goes still, his gaze cooling considerably.

"Alphas aren't necessary--Omega wolves did just fine before Erab. It's just the party line the Packs want us to toe."

His eyes are hostile, and Stiles shivers, sifting a little. Theo moves a step closer, invading his space and touching Stiles' elbow. "I can keep you safe, Stiles. You don't need to stay with a failed Alpha for that anymore."

There's a savage snarl and the nerves buzzing tight and angry in the base of his skull settle as he shifts, out of Theo's grasp, and Peter is  _ there,  _ snarling again, shoving Theo back a step with his big gray body.

Derek tugs Stiles into his arms and he goes, willing to be manhandled, to have Theo's scent covered up and erased.

"Stiles' well-being isn't yours to guarantee," Derek says, softly. "He is my pack member and I will keep him safe."

Theo's eyes were sharp and amused, like Derek was nothing at all to be worried about. He nods and grins at Stiles. "Think about what I said, Stiles. Dredd is always open to you."

He leaves after that, and Stiles huddles in Derek's arms and shivers.

He thinks about what Lydia said and murmurs, softly, "We can't stay here, Derek."


	21. Want what you cannot have

He hates Dredd.

Not only the town which felt small and choking, but the way Derek retreats in on himself, almost reverting to his behavior before they found Stiles.

He hates the way Stiles is quiet and thoughtful here instead of the sparkfire laughing fury he grew to know in the woods.

He hates the way the entire place reeks of hospital and fear, and the way every time he turns around, he's confronted with Theo, smirking and watching and impossible to read.

It's the safest they've been in years, maybe since they fled Beacon Hills. Stiles has found his Lydia and he and Derek are so fucking  _ happy _ it's almost disgusting. He creeps away from the house at night, sitting on a tree stump a block over, where he can breath the scent of the earth and the ocean, and hear them, but faintly.

He is  _ happy _ for his nephew and Stiles, but being around that much happiness is nauseating.

Especially when he sends his days watching Lydia and, inevitably, Jackson.

She's quiet and brilliant, and her hair is like a fucking banner that draws his gaze, and she only smiles for three people: Stiles, soft and fond and sisterly. Theo, tight and reserved and edged with fear. And Jackson, wide and unreservedly happy.

It makes him ache with everything he wants and cannot have.

It would be easier, he thinks, if Jackson didn't remind him so much of himself. He was a pompous arrogant ass, a thin veneer covering a lifetime of insecurities and the low thrumming awe that Lydia gave him any time at all, much less the kind of slow devotion that stories used to be written about.

No, the problem was that Jackson reminded him too much of who he was, when Talia was his Alpha and smiled at him like he was her favorite thing in the world, and he didn't understand it, never understood.

The problem with women like Talia--and Lydia, although Jackson hadn't realized it yet--was that they loved with a ferocity that few could withstand, and when that love flamed to anger, they destroyed everything in their path.

Jackson, he thinks, watching the boy kiss her before she pushes him away, laughing and ducking into her quiet little house, is just like he was, before Talia stole his memories and destroyed him with a few well placed words.

He only hopes when it's Jackson's turn--he can survive.

It isn't only Jackson, though.

Dredd is odd. It's the alpha who isn't an Alpha, it's the quiet fear that pervades the entire town and the way Theo doesn't allow anyone but a few of his closest shifters to go the hospital near the shoreline.

It's the fact that none of them  _ smell _ right.

They’ve been here for almost two weeks, and Stiles is a bundle of nerves and happiness, and Derek is brooding silence and even having watched everyone for two weeks, Peter is no closer to knowing what the hell is going on here than he was when they drove through the gates.

He only knows he hates this tiny town.

And he wants very badly to leave.

  
  



	22. the strange pack

 

Stiles is reading three books and teaching Derek how to play chess when Peter speaks up. He's sprawled on the couch of their little house, watching Derek struggle with the chess game and soaking in the presence of the other two--something Stiles thinks must be a wolf thing. Or maybe not--he likes the quiet few hours a night when it's just the three of them almost as much as the ‘wolves.

It reminds him of the evenings around their fire in the woods, and it always leaves him feeling quietly content.

"Derek, have you seen any of Theo's wolves shift?"

Derek scowls at the chess board for a few seconds more and then moves a pawn. He snarls quietly when Stiles nudges it to the side with his own and removes it from the board. Then he frowns at Peter, his brows pulled down. "No? Why?"

Peter sits up, raising an eyebrow.

Stiles wonders if it's a  werewolf thing or a Hale thing, the eyebrows.

"You don't think it's a little  _ odd _ that none of them shift in front of us?"

Derek's frown deepens and Stiles watches him. Because he didn't. Until Peter mentioned it, he'd never once considered what it might mean, the other werewolves not shifting.

Derek's slowly shifting eyebrows--they're less angry now and more worried--says yeah, he does in fact think it's weird.

"What do you want to do?" Stiles asks, and Derek looks at him. There's worry and regret in his eyes and Stiles nods once, knowing what’s coming. "I told you, you're my pack. If we need to leave, we leave."

Derek shakes his head, slowly, almost as if he's fighting with himself.

He probably is.

"We'll stay. See what we can find out. If we have to leave, we will, but a reluctance to shift doesn't  _ mean _ anything."

Stiles nods. He knows it's a lie, just as much as Peter and Derek. But for now, they lie.

~.~

Derek is always protective, but after that night in their room, he is rarely far from Stiles. If he can't be near the boy, pressing against his shins as a wolf or standing protective and glaring at his shoulder, Peter is there, quietly charming, viciously cutting.

On the few occasions neither can be left with him, Derek delivers him to Lydia with a fierce, deep kiss and a promise to return soon.

"Protective," she says and Stiles snorts before nudging her into the house.

The truth is Derek's protective Alpha routine is annoying--and he can't argue with it. Not when he can feel Theo's too heavy interest, not when they're in Dredd because of him.

He hates it but he bites back his annoyance and deals because he brought this on himself.

"Lydia," he asks, and she glances at him. "You told me what happened to you and Jackson, when you were in the woods. But--you weren't alone."

Scott.

It's not the first time he's thought about his best friend, it's just the first time he's been able to bring himself to ask, to risk all the hope and loss.

"I--Stiles, do you really want to know? Not all stories have happy endings."

He laughs, high and bitter. "My dad got shot in the fucking head by a military bitch, and my best friend got torn to pieces by  the Dead. I'm fucking a werewolf, and don't get me wrong, I love him, but it's not like paranormal creatures and the apocalypse were in my fucking five year plan. So I  _ get _ that the world doesn't have happy endings, ok? Tell me what the hell happened to Scott."

She stares at him, her eyes wide and sad.

"I don't have answers, Stiles."

He snarls and jerks away from the table and she reaches for him, catches his hand and squeezes him to a stop. "I don't have answers, but I know where you can find them."

~*~

"Absolutely not," Derek hisses, catching his arm and yanking him back a step.

Stiles swallows his yelp and glares at the werewolf because, "seriously dude,  _ human _ ."

Derek's ears go pink, but his scowl doesn't let up.

"Look, I need to go."

"You  _ needed _ to find Lydia and now we're caught in a strange pack of secretive werewolves without an alpha. I'm afraid I'm not terribly concerned with your  _ needs _ right now, Mischief." Peter drawls.

Stiles flips him off and keeps his gaze focused on Derek. Because at the end of the day,  _ Derek  _ is the alpha and will say yes or no.

"Derek, please."

He snarls and shakes his head. "No. Fucking no. That place reeks of death and we've been kept away from it because he doesn't want us there. I'm not letting you waltz into something I  _ know _ is dangerous."

Stiles stiffens and Derek steps back, just a half step. "Let me?" he repeats. "Derek, you don't  _ let _ me do anything. I don't owe you any kind of fealty. I'm in your pack because I chose to be, because you respect my damn autonomy. I can leave."

Derek pales and shakes his head. "You don't mean that. You wouldn't.”

"Yeah, well. I didn't think you'd decided what I was allowed to do, but hey, here we are. Both of us looking like idiots."

Stiles spins before Derek can react, stalking toward the hospital and Derek snarls, three big steps catching up and he jerks Stiles around. "I'm trying to protect you," he bites off, shaking the boy and Derek shoves him. Hard.

Furious.

" _ I didn’t ask you to _ ."

Derek stares at him, shocked silent and Stiles slams his hands into Derek's shoulders again, "I didn't ask for any of this! I didn't want to be saved, didn't want to be part of your fucking pack! You keep trying to take care of me, and it's not  _ your job _ !"

Derek whines a little, this tiny broken noise that Stiles hates, because it makes him want to reach out, to grab the alpha and pull him close.

"I didn't want you to save me," he snarls again, and spins.

When he walks away this time, Derek lets him go.

He knows he's overreacting. Knows that Derek doesn't actually want to control him, that he isn't like the Packs that use humans like vaguely glorified slaves.

He knows that Derek is nothing like Duke.

But there is a voice, one that sounds painfully like his father that gets a little too loud to ignore, when Derek's possessive, protective streak flares.

And there's the fact that Stiles is  _ bad _ at listening, at doing what he's told.

He closes his eyes and listens to the waves, and stares at the hospital.

~*~

He knows Derek will be pissed, and that if he gets caught, he's going to be a shitload of trouble. But the open window was practically an invitation.

If invitation meant,  _ gimme an inch and I'll take a mile _ .

Which, to be fair, when Stiles was around was what it always meant.

He slips through the hospital, sticking to quiet, empty corridors and the dark, unused stairwells, and he doesn't actually get what's got everyone so scared of this place.

It's a hospital, and it smells like disinfectant and, mildly, under that, of blood and the sour scent he remembers from when he was sitting at his mother's bedside, the scent he learned early in life to associate with death.

But it's got a few rooms with patients in it on the first floor, and a wide open row of labs on the second, and it's nothing that he wouldn't expect.

A scream echoes down the staircase, and every hair on his body stands up as he peers up the dark stairwell.

That.

That was not what he expected.

He creeps up the next two flights of stairs, and the scream comes again, louder, and so powerful it makes him flinch, but he keeps going because--

Because he's curious and there's something about Dredd that makes him and his wolves nervous, something that isn't  _ right _ .

The lights are off, and he presses himself to the wall, wishing for a heartbeat that Derek was here with his bright glowing eyes. He dismisses it and keeps going.

When he peers through the single door that has lights behind it--

Stiles' stomach twists and he swallows hard as he tries to process what the hell he's seeing.

A girl with long brown hair is strapped down, her face twisted in a rictus silent scream. She's--wolfed out, for lack of a better term, but there's something wrong, something reptilian about her shift. Her teeth and claws and eyes are all werewolf, but she's got fucking  _ scales _ , has a goddamn  _ tail _ and Lydia is leaning over it, scraping it with a wickedly sharp scalpel.

What the  _ actual  _ fuck.

There are others, all of them strapped down. Jackson is one of them, even though wolfed out, he looks closest to Derek and Peter. Every single shifter that they've met and haven't seen shift is here, and not a single one of them looks like the werewolves he's seen since the world ended, none of them look like Derek or Peter, even in their half shift.

They're monstrous and gorgeous, one boy sparking electricity from his hands, one hissing and spitting while a giant stinger flails. Jackson is still, barely recognizable as Lydia drifts near him, and she murmurs something before he nods, and she scrapes his tail--jesus christ Jackson has a fucking  _ tail _ \--something clear and glistening falling into a clear jar.

A hand clamps down on his shoulder and Stiles screams, thrashing forward.

For a heartbeat he hopes that it's Derek, that this isn't as bad as it could be.

But then he twists and Theo smiles at him, bright and pretty and dead.

"Stiles. Tell me. What do you think of my pack?"


	23. Theo's plan

Lydia is watching him with wide, sad eyes. Theo keeps a hand at his neck, his claws digging in just a little. "What are you doing up here, huh, Stiles? You're not supposed to be here. It's off limits. Don't like people seeing what I get up to in here."

"You can trust him," Lydia breaks in sharply and Theo spares her a single smirk before he turns to Stiles.

"I've heard about you, you know. I've been waiting. Lydia gave up on you. It's been two years, I can't really blame her for that."

"Oh yeah? Then must have surprised you both, seeing me in that damn farmhouse, huh?"

Theo's smile goes wider and he release Stiles, just long enough to backhand him.

Lydia screams, a half choked thing that makes his ears ring, or maybe that's the  _ motherfucking pain _ echoing through his goddamn head because holy shit.

He has no idea what the hell Theo and his merry band of misfits actually  _ are _ , but they're almost frighteningly strong.

"You've got a big mouth," Theo says, still grinning, and shakes his head. "Thought about adding you to my pack. You'd be good at it, and god knows my doctors want something new to play with."

"My Alpha will rip your throat out," Stiles spits.

Theo nods, and his smile goes manic and deranged. "Yeah, he might. He'd sure as hell try. But I kill him and you know what happens?"

Stiles goes very still, terror clawing at his gut.

After Erab, when the werewolves came out of the forest in a wave of protection that too quickly twisted into servitude and oppression, everyone got a crash course in werewolf lore.

He grew up in Beacon Hills, where a pack had lived for decades, since the tiny town was founded, and the Alpha was happy to explain everything to the human sheriff who kept her territory crime free.

Alphas could rise two ways--they inherited their powers from their family line. Or they kill and steal it from another alpha.

And staring at Theo, at the wide smiling mouth and the hungry eyes, in this little room surrounded by death--Stiles gets it, so hard and fast it makes him sick. His stomach lurches and he gags as he doubles over.

How long must Theo have waited to find an alpha with a small enough pack?

And Stiles, stupid fucking Stiles with his big dreams of saving the girl--walked one right into his damn camp.

He shoves the useless fury and guilt aside and shifts. His head is ringing and he wonders if he'll die in this damn room.

"No," Theo says, laughing. Belatedly, Stiles realizes he's talking allowed. "Why would I kill you? I  _ like _ you, Stiles," Theo says it earnestly and Stiles feels his gut flip.

"I want you in my pack."

Stiles shakes his head, disgusted. "I have a pack, you psychotic fuck."

"What, the broken Hale? The beta wolf? That's your grand pack? They can't protect you. You would have died in that farmhouse if it weren't for us."

He shrugs. "Maybe. But I'm sure as fuck not going to bare my neck for you or the mad scientists you have running this funhouse."

Theo tuts softly. "You say that now."

"Give me one reason. One reason I would ever change my mind."

Theo smiles, and shakes his head, like Stiles has delighted him. "I'll give you two," he says, a fucked up reward. Lydia makes a noise in her throat.

"If you do this, if you stay in my pack--if you choose me and Derek leaves Dredd. I will spare his life. I'll let him walk out my gates and never hunt him."

Something leapt in Stiles gut and he shakes his head. "He'd never leave me."

Theo keeps going, like Stiles hadn't spoken. "And, when I can trust you. Know you will not chase your wolf anymore. I will tell you where you can find Scott McCall."

~*~

The doctors are scary bastards. They're wrapped up in masks and gloves and long dirty coats and they bend to talk to Theo, their voices indistinct and alien as Stiles stands next to Lydia, shivering and shaking.

"He's lying," Stiles says, again.

There's a big black man spread out on the operating table, but he looks untouched, and Stiles wonders idly what they'll do to him.

"It's like transplants," Lydia says. "Except when they graph the DNA of a werefox to a human, the powers go with the graph. And they can do more than one. That's why--we have a weretiger with a stingray's barb. The scorpion has a coyote shift."

"What about Jackson?"

"Werewolf. And kanima. He's one of the best they've turned out." Something like pride touches her voice and Stiles looks at her. “They think it’s because he was already Bitten when they added the kanima DNA.”

"How could you  _ do _ this?"

"They saved him," she says, simply. "I would do anything to save him. And I--it was years ago, Stiles. We didn't know what Theo was like, then. He seemed as lonely as we were. He was one of the Doctor's first experiments, before Erab broke out. And he could fix people, even after the bite."

Stiles looks back, to where the fucking chimera were stretched out and bound. "That is not  _ fixed _ ," he snarls.

She chews on her lip and refuses to meet his eyes.

"He's lying. About Scott. Isn't he?"

She freezes and he remembers the heavy looks in her house, that first day, and the way she had told him what happened to them, to her and Jackson but never what happened to Scott.

He'd been too afraid to ask and now--now he doesn’t know if he could believe Theo or if he even wants to.

The idea of  _ Scott _ like this, it  makes his stomach churn.

The blonde girl whose operating table they're standing near blinks up at them. "What are you going to do?" Lydia asks, her voice low and Stiles shrugs.

"I won't let him kill Derek," he mumbles.

"Run," the girl whispers. Her eyes are wide and wet and she smiles at him, tremulously. "Don't let them do this to you," she says. "It's--don't let them. Death is better than this."

Stiles stares at her as Theo ambles up and slaps her hard across the face. "Hush now, Erica," he says, pleasantly, and then nods at Lydia. "Take him home, would you?"

Stiles blinks at Theo. "You're--you're letting me go?"

Theo nods. "You have all the information, now. What you do with it is up to you. So we'll give you a couple days, because I know it's a lot to take in."

"And if I tell Derek?"

Theo shrugs. "I fight and kill him and I get you in my pack without having to pay out for it. This isn't a downside for me."

"You really think you could kill my alpha?" Stiles asks, and he puts every bit of bluster into his voice that he can.

"I know I can," Theo says, and he grins. Takes a half step to put himself in Stiles' personal space and breathes the words into his ear. "Because I don't fight like an alpha, Stiles. And I never fight alone."

He brushes a hand over Stiles' neck and that's as much a challenge as anything else here today, but it's not for him.

Stiles glares at the other man, and shakes his head. "I won't ever be your bitch," he hisses and Theo smiles, slow as molasses, confident as sin.

"Maybe you won't," he says. "But you won't be Derek's either."

Lydia catches his arm and drags him out of the room before Stiles can say anything else, and he lets her because if he punches Theo he'll break his fucking hand and get into even more shit than he already is in.

He's shaking and Lydia's pace is just short of running as she hauls him from the hospital. They get maybe a hundred feet from it when strong hands rip him from Lydia and she screams, a noise cut off abruptly and then--

"I'm sorry," Stiles breathes into Derek's ear and the alpha whines where he's pressed into Stiles neck, scenting him, holding him close. “God, Derek, I’m  _ so sorry. _ ”


	24. Lydia's plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed Friday's posting, I'm so sorry!! This Friday and Saturday will be the final chapters!! <3

Derek doesn't release him even when they're in the house, the door shut and bolted behind them. Peter watches with bright, worried eyes and Lydia curls in on herself, trying to make herself smaller.

"You smell like  him," Derek snarls, a hint of a plaintive whine seeping from under the rage and Stiles nods, pressing harder into his chest.

"He wanted me to. Wanted you to know it was him."

Derek stills, a growl rattling in his throat and Stiles lifts his head and peers up at the Alpha.

At  _ his  _ Alpha.

Fuck, he'd never wanted this and now--now he can't imagine a life that didn't revolve around the 'wolf in his arms, couldn't imagine going back out into the end of the world without his pack.

He licks his lips. "Theo wants me in his pack. And he's willing to kill you to get me."

Peter moves, faster than Stiles has ever seen and he has a second to be glad the older wolf is so fucking smart as he catches Derek and throws him into a wall, pushing Lydia and Stiles aside. Derek roars, fighting Peter's hold and he shakes the Alpha. "He isn't leaving you, Derek," Peter shouts. "Calm  _ down _ ."

Derek snarls again, lashing out at the older werewolf and Peter yelps as Derek claws open  his side. He shudders, and his grip weakens, just for a moment, before he shoves Derek back into the wall with a savage snarl.

Lydia screams, and Stiles clamps his hands on his ears,  flinching away from her as Derek shifts, out of his Beta form and back into the familiar features Stiles knows, the rage and fear draining away into confusion.

Peter is panting, clutching his side, staring at her with blown wide eyes.

"You--you can't fight," she says, trembling. "You have twenty four hours,  _ maybe _ , before Theo comes to take what you won't give him. You  _ can't _ fight."

"You knew," Peter murmurs and she flicks a look at him, apologetic before she nods.

"Theo likes me. So do his Doctors. And none of them know what I am. I let them pull blood, look at their research. I keep Theo company and protect his raiding parties and he keeps Jackson alive and out of harm's way." Her gaze flicks to Derek, to the disgust in his face and Stiles watches her flinch. "You can hate me if you want, but I do what I need to do to survive. I won't apologize for that."

Peter breathes something that sounds almost like a prayer before he looks to his nephew.

"What will you do?" he demands.

"You leave," Lydia says. "You take twelve hours, and tomorrow morning, when the guard shift changes, and Theo is too confidant to think you'd attempt it--you get the hell out of here and you don't fucking look back."

"How?" Derek says, and some of the tension drains out of her as she nods once, like she is allowing herself to believe that they will listen to her.

Like she hopes this will work.

And then she tells them how.


	25. The alpha  & his boy

 

When night falls, Peter rouses himself and says, “Lydia. I will take you home.”

She’s calmed down since she dragged Stiles from the hospital and she eyes Peter with something like amused disdain but inclines her head graciously.

“You--you can come with us. You  _ should  _ come with us,” Stiles says.

She laughs, a little, and it’s sad, heartbreakingly sad. “Stiles, I love you. But you found the family you need.”

“What about Scott?” he whispers and her gaze turns savage and cold.

“Come to my house in the morning, before you leave. I’ll have everything I can find about him put together for you.”

Stiles bolts off the couch, out of Derek’s arms and throws himself at her. He doesn’t cry. When she pulls away, she’s pale but dry eyed and she kisses him on the cheek before she turns and leaves the house without another word, trusting Peter to trail after her like a lost puppy.

The smirk on his lips as he does just that is downright disturbing.

Derek is quiet and Stiles stands in front of him.

“Is this what you want?” he murmurs and Derek’s grip on Stiles’ hands tightens.

“I want you safe and happy,” he says, lowly. “Whatever the cost, I want you safe and happy.”

Stiles blinks back the sudden rush of emotions and tugs lightly on their hands. “Come to bed. I smell like him, and I want you to fix it.”

Derek’s grip on his hand goes bruisingly tight and his eyes flare red, but he’s silent and composed as he stands and allows Stiles to lead him to the tiny bedroom. It smells faintly of pack and the musky scent of their den, something Stiles thinks is just the ‘wolves, something he adores.

Vaguely, he wonders if it’s rude to fuck in the bed they’ve shared with Peter, before he decides he doesn’t care. Not tonight.

Tonight, he just-- _ they  _ need this.

Derek is quiet as Stiles gracelessly tugs off his shirts, and his hands come up, steadying him as Stiles toes out of his boots with some difficulty. The broad, warm hands are distracting, and he keeps losing track of what he’s doing as he focuses on the slow glide of Derek’s rough thumbs over the jut of his hipbones, and the soft swell of his belly.

He whines a little when Derek leans in, rough shirt dragging over his chest as Derek kisses him.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Stiles pants against his lips and Derek smiles, presses it into Stiles mouth with a wet hot glide of his tongue, swallows down the greedy groan Stiles gives up.

Derek kisses him like Stiles is the air and moon and the cool wind in the trees, like he’s every good thing in the world, holding Stiles careful and reverent, licking into his mouth with almost meticulous care.

It's good, but not enough and Stiles whines, biting at Derek's lower lip until the other man growls and throws him down.

Then it's a rush of hands and shed clothing and desperate gasping noises that all add up to the same thing, to  _ more  _ and  _ please  _ and  _ want _ .

Derek crashes back onto the bed, onto Stiles, and he groans, all hungry and needy at the skin to skin contact, the drag of Derek's chest and hair against his body.

"Derek," Stiles gasps, jerking on his hair, and Derek grumbles something low and wordless before he licks Stiles cock.

Stiles jerks, hips shoving up against Derek's grasp, and Derek grins against the soft skin of his hip and then he swallows Stiles down, staring up at him the whole time.

It's not  _ new _ , being with Derek, but it never does lose it's appeal, the wonder of it.

He sees that same wonder in Derek's eyes as he licks and sucks at Stiles cock, his eyes closing in bliss when Stiles moans and fucks into his mouth with tiny, abortive little thrusts of his hips.

"Stop," Stiles gasps, "Stop."

Derek pulls off him with an obscene pop, and Stiles pants as he drags him up, kissing him deep and desperate.

"What do you want?" Derek murmurs and Stiles shivers.

"You."

Derek's eyes flutter and he fits his hands to Stiles' hips, nipping a red path down his throat. "Want you to ride me," he says. "Want you stretched out on my cock, taking what you want from me."

"Fuck," Stiles whines, his dick twitching, "Yeah, Derek, yeah. Please."

Derek scrambles for the lube and he opens the younger man up slowly, his gaze fixed and bright on Stiles's face as he rubs at Stiles' rim. Stiles watches him, arching into the wet press of his finger, and Stiles whines, arching into him.

"Stiles," Derek whispers. "I wanna taste you."

Stiles whimpers and Derek's gaze darts to him, curious and hopeful and wanting. "Can I taste you, baby?"

"Yeah," Stiles breathes, "Fuck, yes, please."

Derek makes this noise that reminds Stiles of the purring happiness from their forest den, and then he feels the first lick of Derek's tongue and he can't  _ think _ about the noises he's making, can't think beyond the hot wet possessive press of his damn tongue, licking around him, licking  _ into _ him. He's babbling, he knows he's babbling, begging for more, for everything, for Derek's fingers that press in alongside is tongue, for Derek's cock, rubbing against his calf.

And even over his babbling, he can hear the obscene, hungry noises that Derek's making, the deep groans and the whispered praise when he fingers Stiles a little more. It's an endless loop of pleasure and Stiles is sobbing, desperate for more, pressing back into Derek's lips and fingers and he comes like that, the orgasm ripping through him so hard and fast it leaves him gasping, twitching and limp and Derek groans, surging up to cover him, biting at the back of his neck and pressing hungry pleas into his skin. "Please, Stiles, I need--"

"Go for it," he slurs, "c'mon, big guy. Fuck me."

He hums contentedly as Derek hitches his hips up. He fumbles to get his knees under him, making it easier for Derek before he remembers--

"Wait," he gasps, batting Derek's hands away and scrambling around on come drunk limbs. Derek's staring at him, pupils blown and gleaming faintly red, teeth a little bit too sharp, and so hard it looks almost painful.

"Wanna ride you," he mutters and Derek nods, groaning as Stiles kisses him, licking into his mouth and pushing him back.

Stiles settles over Derek's hips.

There's always a moment, when Derek first pushes in, that Stiles' hesitates, pain pushing up against the wrong side of pleasure. A moment when Derek's grip on hips go bruising tight, and worry furrows his brows, and then--

" _ Ohh _ ," Stiles moans, and Derek's grip loosens, his body  _ gives _ , and he slides down, taking Derek's cock deep.

It feels right, in a way nothing ever has. This, Derek pressed deep inside him, heart pounding hard under Stiles' hand, feels right and good, like  _ home _ .

"Stiles," Derek says, anxious, his hips rolling in little thrusts he can't seem to stop, and Stiles leans down, kissing him lazily before he shifts, lifting up a little, and sinking back down.

It's a slow, an almost lazy pace. Time has shown that Derek can take it, prefers it, the slow teasing rolls of Stiles' hips, the excruciatingly lazy lovemaking.

They've fucked, hard and fast, of course they have.

But this is where Derek watches him with something like awe in his wide eyes, where he whispers nonsense words and promises into Stiles' skin, where he lays back, pliant and sweet as Stiles takes everything he will give, everything he  _ wants _ .

Everything. He wants  _ everything _ with Derek.

He doesn't know exactly what tomorrow will bring, but he's damn sure that he'll fight like hell to keep this. To keep Derek.

He twists his hips, grinding dirty and hard against the 'wolf and Derek whines. There's a telltale thickness to his dick now, and Stiles grins at him, his cock hardening between them. "You gonna knot me, big bad? Gonna get all up in me and fuck me full of your come?"

Derek's fangs drop and he snarls as Stiles shoves against his shoulders, pinning him to the bed and rolling his hips down, hard. There.  _ There's  _ that fucking delicious pressure.

"Want you to," Stiles mumbles. "Want to feel you inside me, tomorrow. Want Theo to fucking  _ smell _ you on me."

Derek snarls and shoves his hips up, hard, slamming Stiles down on his dick, once, twice, a---

" _ Fuck _ ," Stiles groans, feeling Derek's knot pushing in, feeling it catch on his rim as it swells and Derek comes, hard. Stiles shudders, and Derek's there, a hand around him that he didn't realize he needed until he's writhing, tugging against the knot, and  _ coming _ with a whining moan, slumping down into Derek and the mess between them as the wolf twitches and comes and comes inside him.

He slumps into Derek, panting into the ‘wolf’s neck and Derek winds his arms around the smaller man, holding him close as he shudders through his climax.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when he can speak without whining. Derek presses a silent kiss into his hair, and Stiles scowls, sitting up. It tugs at Derek’s knot and both of them hiss, Derek groaning as he comes again. “I mean it,” Stiles gasps, rocking involuntarily until Derek’s hands, tipped in claws, dig into his hips, dragging him to a stop as he pants.

Stiles grins and the ‘wolf scowls at him. It would be more effective, he thinks, if they weren’t tied together, Derek’s come slowly filling him up.

“I’m--I need to protect you,” Derek says quietly, his gaze trained on the bruise on Stiles’ collarbone. “But I shouldn’t tell you what you can’t do.” His gaze flicks up and worry shines at Stiles, briefly.

“I can’t lose you. I won’t survive it,” Derek says. It’s simple, a fact of life, a baseline truth and it scares Stiles.

Because they lose things. That’s the only damn guarantee in this world.

 


	26. The wolf & the girl

 

He follows her through the darkness, his eyes searching the night. The tale they told, her and Mischief. It left him anxious, itchy in his skin, and he wants nothing more than to hide her somewhere safe in his den, somewhere the world cannot touch her.

He doesn't have the right to do that, and he knows it.

"You," she says, softly. "I remember you."

His gaze swings to her, startled, and she smiles, not even bothering to look at him. "I remember you used to come to the Stilinski home, with Laura, and warn the Sheriff of things to come."

"You--"

"Hid. You never saw me. He didn't trust you with me or Stiles, but Stiles never listened. I did."

She shrugs, and unlocks her front door. "You watched him, like you wanted something from him," she adds.

Peter follows her into the house, and she makes a tiny noise of disapproval in her throat, but she doesn't forbid it. He wants, badly, to push her against the door and see how much she will allow with that haughty expression.

"You watch me the same way," she says, and he smiles then.

Smart beautiful girl.

"What do you suppose I want from you, Lydia?" He purrs and she tilts her head, considering him. Her eyes gleam, ice cold emerald, and she finally shrugs. "I don't know. I don't suppose it matters."

"Doesn't it?"

"No," she says, sharply, furious suddenly. "You are leaving and I am Jackson's. Want is all well and good, wolf, but I am not yours and I never will be."

The words aren't spoken cruelly. It's said almost  _ carefully _ and he shivers under her curious, worried eyes.

"We were drawn back together, you and Stiles and Derek and I," he says, and her eyes narrow. "There is no denying that."

"Coincidence."

"Coincidence doesn't happen, not in the end of the world," Peter says, and he steps away, realizing abruptly how close he has pushed to the pretty girl.

He gives her a mocking little smile and turns, slipping into the night and letting the door shut and close Lydia off from him.

He wishes he knew why he was so fascinated with her. Derek has noticed, told him that whatever he's thinking he can't indulge it.

Lydia was Stiles' pack, and Jackson's lover and Theo's pet, and he didn't know where  _ Peter _ fit in.

Maybe it was simply that for all she belonged to  _ them  _ in so many ways, Peter belonged to  _ her _ , completely and irrevocably.

Morning breaks earlier than he likes, and for a moment, he huddles in his nest of blankets before he pushes to his feet.

He knocks and peers in at Stiles and Derek, trying not to inhale the scent of them together more than he has to.

"Derek," he murmurs, not looking at the boy sleeping against Derek's chest.

"I'm awake, Uncle Peter," his nephew says. "Take our things to the Jeep. We'll be just a moment."

Peter slips out and doesn't listen to Derek wake his sleeping mate with a soft kiss.

He wonders when he accepted that Stiles is in fact Derek's mate. When the idea stopped feeling preposterous and began feeling inevitable and  _ right _ .

He shrugs the thought aside and carries their packed bags to the Jeep and waits beside it for Derek and Stiles.

He isn't terribly surprised when Lydia drifts up next to him, and he forces himself to not lean into her space, to not inhale the clean sweet scent of her.

She isn't his.

"I would stay with you," he says, and she flicks him an amused smile.

"I have no need of another werewolf, Peter," she says, a smile teasing her tone and he rolls his head to look at her.

"Maybe I need you," he says, and she laughs at that.

"Stop that," Stiles says, grumpily. "It's too damn early and we're too likely to die for laughter, Lydia, it's just rude."

"Stop being melodramatic," Lydia says crisply, pushing off the Jeep. She digs a thin file from her bag and passes it to Peter. "Give it to him only when you're safely away from here," she orders.

Stiles makes an affronted noise, and she nods to herself.

"Before you go, there is one final thing," she says, and Derek tenses, because nothing good can come of that tone, of that posture.

Stiles doesn't even flinch. He looks almost like he expects this.

"The girl?" he asks, and Lydia's eyes go bright and wet.

"He'll kill her. And Boyd. They--you need to help them," she says, urgently. He nods and shoves his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels.

"Tell us how."


	27. The girl & her boy

The girl and her boy 

 

The hospital is one of the only places he hasn't been in Dredd, since he arrived with Stiles and Peter. He walks through the halls now, Stiles close to his side and his wolf howls and fights him.

This place--it's not  _ right _ . It's dark and the air reeks of fear and death, not the kind of fear and death he smells when he's near the Dead, or even the kind he feels when he's around human militant camps and the werewolf packs he and Peter almost always skirt.

This place smells like disinfectant, like medicine and drugs and terror and death, like the Change that is rotting down to the bones.

He fucking hates it and he hesitates a little, until Stiles slips his hand into Derek's and squeezes, reassuringly.

The plan is simple. It is idiotic in it's simplicity--they're following Lydia, bluffing, riding every hope and risk on her authority and the respect Theo's pack has for her.

Not a pack. He has to remember that. They're not a pack, they're something else. Something--wrong.

The werewolves aren't a pack, they aren't even fucking  _ werewolves _ .

Lydia, the beautiful girl that drew them here, that Stiles loves, that Peter is obsessed with--she's got all of their lives in her pretty little hands and that is a fucking terrifying thought.

She's dressed in a neat blue skirt, a startlingly white top that flutters and flows as she walks, almost stalks, through the halls, her heels clacking an imperious rhythm.

She looks untouchable, and he holds that thought close as he follows her deeper into the hospital.

"Ms. Lydia," a man says, stopping her halfway through the hospital and Lydia pauses, gives him an impatient stare. "Ma'am, there are no tests scheduled for today."

"Clearly," she says, icy and cold. "But as you can see, we have some new additions to the pack and we aren't waiting a week to do their tests." She waves a hand at Peter and Derek, not bothering to look at them. "Unless you would like to explain to Theo why they aren't tested and assimilated with the pack?" she asks, sweetly and the boy pales. takes a step back. Lydia gives him a wide, false smile. "I thought as much. Excuse us."

She sweeps past them and Stiles offers a cheeky sort of smile before they follow the tiny girl.

"Think that worked?"

"For the moment," she says, evasively. Derek's eyebrows furrow when he realizes the scent rolling off her is worry and he growls, low in his throat. She flicks a look at him. "Stop scowling," she orders, "And help me get them out of here."

She stops and keys open a door, and Derek steps inside.

And for the first time since he stepped into the hospital he feels something other than death fear and worry.

There are two of them, one slumped against the wall, his knees drawn up and his head tipped back, staring at them with a fatalistic gleam in his eyes.

The girl though. Her hair is pulled back in a tangle knot at the nape of her neck, and she’s standing, in front of the boy, a defensive half crouch, her eyes shining.

She looks maybe a hundred pounds, soaking wet, she’s shaking on her feet and she honest to god  _ snarls _ at him when he gets too close.

“Leave us the fuck alone, you butcher,” she spits.

“Erica,” Lydia snaps. Hazel eyes flick to Lydia and narrow in loathing. “They aren’t Theo’s. They’re not--they want to help.

He isn’t sure how, but she goes stiffer, tenser.

“The last person who wanted to help us locked us in here and used us as  goddamn science experiment and you  _ helped him.” _

“And if you stay here,” Derek says, hoping like hell he isn’t fucking this up. His wolf is tense and watchful, trained on this girl in a way that he hasn’t acknowledged anyone since he found Stiles.

_ Pack. Mine. _

“If you stay, you’ll die. Theo’s doctors will tear you apart and put  you back together as something monstrous. Lydia watched it happen to save her mate.” He glances at Lydia, and then lets his gaze travel to the boy behind Erica who still hasn’t moved. She actually  _ growls _ at him and he retrains his gaze on her. “But you don’t have to.”

“What, are you going to  _ save _ us,” Erica mocks, her voice sticky sweet.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “But only if you quit being a bitch and move your ass. We sure as hell aren’t going to die for you. Make up your mind, catwoman. Die here or take a chance.”

Derek glances back at him and Stiles winks at him.

“What--”

“Erica,” the boy says, speaking for the first time and she turns, softening just a little as she curves toward him. “Trust them.”

She makes a low frustrated noise, but she nods.

“He--he can’t walk,” Erica says, and the boy pushes out his leg. Derek smells it before he sees it, the rotting wound on his leg, Erab twisting in his blood.

Derek nods.

“Peter, help him. Erica, stay close to me and Stiles, until we’re out. Do you hear me? I’ll take care of that as soon as we get out of Dredd. But you need to trust us until then.”

She looks like she hates it, like it’s the worst thing anyone has ever asked of her, but Peter is pulling the man--”Be careful with him,” Erica snaps, “I want Boyd close to me!”--to his feet and she trails them like she has to, like staying close to Boyd is as essential as breathing.

Derek glances at Stiles and nods to himself. Maybe it is. Maybe mates aren’t just for ‘wolves.

He nudges Stiles after Peter and Lydia takes a deep breath, straightening her shoulders as she strides ahead, leading them out.

And that, predictably, is when it all goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm the worst and I'm sorry. The final three chapters are ready to post tomorrow!! Life got kinda crazy, I'm super sorry!!!!


	28. Confrontation

“Where are--Lydia, you can’t take them out of here!”

Lydia goes still and turns to the voice and Derek--Derek tries very hard not to let his pulse go sky high, to not cringe away from the girl.

What had Stiles said about her? The girl with hair the color of flames, the will of an Alpha and a connection with the Dead.

For the first time, as she glared, tiny and fierce and beautiful, at one of Theo's men, she looked like everything Stiles said she was.

"Donovan. Are _you_ telling _me_ what I am _allowed_ to do? Me. I am Theo's right fucking hand, and you--," her voice dips, all dismissive disgust as she takes a step closer to him, "you're a fucking science experiment. He has dozens of you. He has one of me."

Donovan swallows and shifts and Lydia clucks in her throat, pats his chest. "That's what I thought." She turns, her vulnerable back to the were, and it made Derek's hackles rise, made Stiles' pulse go rabbit fast and uneven.

She stalks away and they fall in behind her.

"I've got a distraction set up," she murmurs, low enough that Derek and Peter are the only ones who hear her. "But you need to move quickly. When you get out, head north. There's a pack there--Stamoi's pack. Theo's afraid of her. If you can cross into her boarders, you'll shake him. You're on your own after that."

Derek nods and Lydia pushes open the door of the hospital.

“Uh. The guards. Why are there no guards?” Stiles asks.

Lydia’s lips curve into a smug smile and she pushes him lightly toward the Jeep.

“How exactly did you manage to find Dead to attack the west wall, Lydia?” Peter asks, his head cocked and she gives a demure little shrug.

“A girl has to have her secrets,” she says.

_A connection with the Dead_.

No wonder Theo kept her so tightly leashed.

“Come with us,” Derek says, abruptly and Stiles jerks, looking at him, his scent going bright and wild with hope. Peter ignores them, shoves Boyd into the backseat and Erica scrambles in after them.

They don’t have time for this, he can hear the fight ending, the Dead falling to Theo’s pack, and he shifts, anxiously.

“He’ll never forgive this, not even from you.”

“I can’t leave,” she whispers, shaking her head, her gaze haunted and longing.

“None of you can,” an easy voice says and Derek shifts immediately, pushing Lydia and Stiles behind him, tugging hard on the bond with Peter as he faces Theo.

“Der,” Stiles whispers and Theo’s gaze flicks to the boy. It’s _infuriating_.

It’s been there, the lowkey _wrong_ ness to Theo, every time he’s looked at Stiles, but it’s only now that Derek really gets it.

Theo watches Stiles like he’s _his_ , like Stiles is already gone from Derek’s pack.

And the wolf in him _hates_ it, _hates Theo._

“You don’t want to leave, Stiles.” Theo says and Stiles shifts. “You’ve been searching for Lydia since you lost her, and you’re going to just leave her here? Because the werewolf wants you to? You don’t even _know_ him.”

“Know him a helluva a lot better than I know you. I _trust_ him,” Stiles snaps back.

“So you’re gonna just leave her, then? Like you left Scotty?” Derek can feel Stiles flinch, and he growls. Theo’s eyes flick to him, amused for a heartbeat before he refocuses on Stiles. “Like you left your Dad?”

“Theo,” Lydia snaps but it’s lost in the rush of furious limbs, Stiles darting past Derek faster than the wolf expects, faster than he can stop.

He trained his boy for three months in the mountains, taught him to run and hide, taught him to wrestle and fight, and now Stiles darts in, fast, and Derek _shouts,_ scrambling for him a second too late.

Stiles punches Theo, hard and Theo _laughs_ , spits blood and grins into the next blow. The third one makes him stagger. Derek jerks forward and Peter catches him by the wrist. “Wait, nephew,” he orders, his voice a low hiss. He’s watching—Lydia. He’s watching Lydia and Derek blinks at her, at the bright gleam in her eyes, and the way her lips are pressed tight together, energy almost crackling off her.

He goes still,  his gaze swinging back to Stiles and Theo.

Theo who is swaying on his feet, laughing still as he flicks a look at Derek. “You’re gonna let your little bitch fight for you? That’s the kind of alpha you are?”

Derek feels something settle in his gut as Stiles shoulders stiffen. He shrugs, smiles small and bright.

“My mate doesn’t need me to fight his battles. He’s doing just fucking fine taking you to pieces.”

Theo snarls and lunges forward and Stiles—Stiles swings up and twists, something small gleaming in his hand, and the sharp scent of wolfsbane spins through the Derek’s senses, before the scent of _blood_ and _metal_.

He snarls, grabbing Stiles and pulling him back, pulling him to safety, but.

Theo coughs.

Once.

He stares down at his gut, at the wet gaping wound, the silvery black blood pouring out with slippery guts and it clicks, suddenly. Stiles is tense and shivery in his arms, still gripping the knife in his right hand, and Theo blinks at him. Blood is on his lips, staining them silver.

What the hell did he _do_  to himself in that fucking hospital?

“Stiles,” he gasps. “Your dad. You’re wrong about him.”

Stiles snarls, tears himself out of Derek’s arms and slashes Theo’s throat, wide and rough.

The coyote gives a wet gurgle and his smile twitches  a little before he crumples, dead at Stiles’ feet.

There’s a long gasping sort of silence, so loud it pounds in his ears, and then—

Lydia shrieks and she throws herself at Stiles, her shoulders shaking, and it’s only when Stiles’ wraps his arms around her, silvery black blood staining her pristine clothing, that Derek realizes she’s sobbing into his shoulder.

He glances at Peter, his eyes wild and confused and sees the almost proud smile the older werewolf is giving the girl.

“What just _happened?”_ Derek demands plaintively.

Peter smirks and sighs. “She’s fucking perfect, nephew. Fucking _perfect.”_

  



	29. Endgame

__

 

It comes in stages, what happened. Derek wants answers, but Peter tugs lightly on Lydia and she nods, turning and leading them back to the little house where he, Derek and Stiles have been living. The girl and her oversized male companion come too, because Derek is possessive, even now and he won't let them wander far from him.

Stiles's hands are still sticky with black blood, and his eyes are wide, his heart pounding and shocky.

"Derek," Peter says, nudging the alpha toward Mischief. "Your mate."

He catches Boyd as Derek moves away and Stiles gasps, frantic as Derek pulls him in.

"Breathe," Derek murmurs. "C'mon, baby, breath for me, ok?"

Peter watches the way Derek holds him, the careful hands, the way he presses Stiles palm into his chest and hums, "Feel that? Slow down and match my breathes."

He tunes them out as he focuses on Lydia. "Has he always gotten panic attacks?"

"As long as I've known him," Lydia says. "Usually--it takes something pretty serious," she says, nervously and for the first time, something like regret flickers in her eyes. She glances back at Peter and there's sorrow, but determination in her gaze, in her scent, and he smiles.

Fierce wild thing.

It's only when Stiles breath is slow and easy, his head on Derek's chest that the Alpha growls, "Explain what the hell just happened."

Lydia shrugs. "I've known for a long time that if we stayed here, Theo would destroy us. He was a timebomb, with his mad scientists."

Peter stiffens and she waves a hand. "Jackson and the pack will take care of them. We couldn't do anything until Theo was gone, and the chimera were terrified of him. They wouldn't move against him. Not even Jackson. And I couldn't make him. But then, Stiles, you were here and you were everything we needed. You had a life that was too good to let Theo tangle you in his schemes, and he had just enough about Scott to tease you into listening. I knew if you were angry enough, you'd attack him--remember how you went after the twins, back in Beacon Hills when they beat up Scott? You're temper has never had a lot of sense. But you could have killed him, and if you didn't, I knew Derek would keep you safe. So I gambled."

"You  _ used _ us," Derek snarls and she nods, readily.

"I did. And I'd do it again. You have no idea what we've lived with what kind of monster he was. I did what I had to survive." She stares at Derek, at the fierce glare on his face and her heartbeat is steady and even. "And he was safe. Between you and the knife I gave him--there's no way he'd have gotten hurt, not anything that he couldn’t heal from."

"You didn't have the right to do that," Derek snarls.

“No. But tell me, Derek. How far would you go to protect Stiles? How many lines would you cross?” She glances at Stiles, regret clear in her cold green eyes and says, “I am sorry it had to be you. But I don’t regret this. Not when it kept Jackson from being killed. Not when it means we’re free.”

A tear spills over her cheek, and she wipes at it, impatiently. Stiles stares at her from where Derek is still holding him, and his eyes are wide and wet. Peter shifts, just a little, and it makes Lydia smile, rueful and warm as he flanks Derek and the boy.

“What now?” Stiles asks, softly.

“Now,” Lydia says, drawing out the word. “We leave. We’re free to go wherever we want.”

Derek’s head tilts, just a little, and his eyes narrow. From the couch, Erica and Boyd watch them. “You want to go with us,” Derek says, his voice flat and disbelieving and Lydia shrugs.

“I want to be with Stiles and Jackson.”

“What did he mean,” Stiles asks, abruptly, pulling away from Derek a little. His eyes are clear and fierce. “What did he mean about my dad?”

Lydia falters and she glances away, her heartbeat spiking.

“Lydia,” Stiles says, desperate and urgent and Peter’s eyes narrow on the girl. “What the hell did he  _ mean?” _


	30. Epilogue

They leave differently than they came. In a caravan of four cars--Erica in the Jeep loaded with everything Lydia demanded from Dredd. Peter and Boyd--newly bitten and flashing golden eyes far too often for Stiles’ comfort--following in a black SUV. Lydia and Jackson in a blue truck. And Stiles, sitting next to Derek in a small, impractical Camaro. They had asked, if others wanted to join them, but the chimera splintered without Theo to lead them and Derek seemed happier, keeping the pack small.

It was already too large, and made Stiles uncomfortable. But Erica and Boyd pulled at something in the Alpha that Derek couldn’t explain and Stiles wouldn’t leave Lydia behind, so here they were.

He rubs the file that Lydia gave him, the ones he’s read and read and read again, while Derek sat still and silent behind him, while Derek slept next to him.

_ Is this what you want? _

It was a rumor, a barely there  _ whisper _ .

It was hope.

Derek reaches for him, twisting their fingers together, and Stiles gives him a smile. He can still smell the wolf on him, the ache from Derek fucking him slow and sweet last night, and he rubs his thumb over the bruises on his thigh, pressing down for that flair of pain.

It felt, almost, like a phantom kiss, a promise written into his skin.

_ Are you sure, Stiles? _

“We can still go south,” Derek says, his voice low. “We can go back.”

Stiles shakes his head, and flips the file open. “It’s a rumor, Derek. We don’t  _ know _ . But this--”

He closes his eyes, inhaling and hearing it again. Lydia’s voice, shaking and shaking him apart.

_ Scott’s alive. He’s with a militia family in Canada. Here. There are photos. _

And while his heart beat, too hard, too happy, too much--

_ Stiles, there’s more--there’s. We heard that Duc was killed. That humans took Beacon Hills. _

He’d stared at her, refusing to believe where she was going with this.  _ We heard a man is running things now, and they call him the Sheriff. _

It was a rumor. A dream and maybe--maybe if they survived the winter and found Scott, maybe then.

Maybe then.

“C’mon, Sweetwolf. Let’s find my brother,” he says, flashing Derek a smile, and they leave Dredd behind.

Maybe, he thinks, they can all go home, one day.

He looks at Derek, at the hand still behind held by the wolf, the small content curve of his lips.

Maybe they are already home.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT'S IT!!!   
> The 'verse is open to future stories (look for that this spring) but this one is over and I loved writing it. Thanks for reading!!! <3


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